The French Language and National Identity (1930–1975) 9783110809947, 9789027975577

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THE FRENCH LANGUAGE AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

Contributions to the Sociology of Language

22

Joshua A. Fishman Editor

MOUTON PUBLISHERS • THE HAGUE • PARIS • NEW YORK

The French Language and National Identity (1930-1975)

David C. Gordon

A language is a destiny . . . it is the instrument by which [a nation's] personality is communicated, situates itself in history, affirms its active and creative uniqueness. Pierre-Henri Simon

M O U T O N PUBLISHERS • THE HAGUE • PARIS • NEW YORK

I S B N : 90-279-7557-4 Jacket design by Jurriaan Schrofer © 1978, M o u t o n Publishers, The Hague, T h e Netherlands Printed in Great Britain

to

Victoria and Matthew

Contents

Introduction

1

1. France's Linguistic Identity

21

2. Waning and Resurgence

42

3. The Challenge Within

95

4. French as Identity Shield

115

5. French as Problematic

147

6. French as Legacy

175

Conclusions

203

Postscript

212

Bibliography

215

Introduction

"The time appears to have arrived when it is appropriate to speak of the French world as one once spoke of the Roman world . . . " (Rivarol 1784).1

T h e protagonist o f this book, the French language, has played and continues t o play, although under radically new circumstances, a dramatic and a universalist role in world culture. Even to this day, t w o centuries after Rivarol's famous essay - written shortly after the Milanese philosophe Beccaria could say to his translator of Crimes and Punishments, the Abbé Morellet, h o w honored he was to be . . translated into the language which is the mistress and illuminator o f Europe" 2 — there are voices w i t h out as well as within the ' 'hexagon' ' to praise and boast o f the ' 'universality", It will b e noted that t h e present essay is only peripherally a c o n t r i b u t i o n to the n e w school of the " s o c i o l o g y of l a n g u a g e " and even less to current "sociolinguistics". See Fishman (1971-72, I: pp. 7-12) f o r distinctions and definitions. It is, in a sense, "concerned w i t h language varieties as targets, as obstacles and as facilities, and w i t h the users and use of language varieties as aspects of more encompassing social patterns or processes" (p. 9), but it is m o r e " p r o g r a m m a t i c o r a r g u m e n t a t i v e " t h a n rigorously quantitative, as Fishman and his school w o u l d have it. N o r a m I concerned w i t h t h e debate over w h e t h e r language ability is " l e a r n e d " or congenital, n o r w i t h t h e debate as t o w h e t h e r personal identity is m o l d e d b y language rather than language being a p r o d u c t of its social use. For a s u m m a r y discussion of such issues see Isaacs (1975, ch. vii). Language, he concludes, is still a " m y s t e r y " . M i n e is essentially an essay o n cultural change, w i t h an emphasis u p o n the language dimension. Parts o f the present s t u d y treat aspects of cultural decolonization in the T h i r d World, in N o r t h Africa, in particular, that I have already discussed in earlier w o r k s (Gordon 1962 and 1971). I o w e a particular debt o f gratitude t o Charles Gallagher for his encouragement, as w a s true of m y o t h e r books. In part, the present w o r k is the result of a conversation w i t h h i m at Villa Serbelloni, on t h e shores of Lake C o m o , in April 1970. 1 All translations f r o m Rivarol are mine unless otherwise indicated. 2 Letter written in 1766, quoted in M. T . Maestro, Voltaire and Beccaria as Reformers of Criminal Law ( N e w Y o r k 1942, p. 69). I m a k e use o f the t e r m " h e x a g o n " to refer t o

2

Introduction

and the "clarity" of French, and to see it as the proper and appropriate medium of the values of "humanism" in its broadest sense. Clarity, universality and humanism, in this perspective, are interrelated: clarity is a quality of expression that facilitates human communication and intercourse, and universality refers to the human condition beyond time and place.3 The conviction as to the value and the mission of the French language has been shared by many Frenchmen whether to the political Left or to the Right. To them it is part of their pride as well as of their sense of identity. To many others around the world where the French presence has been experienced, the French language has played an important role either as part of national identity or as a problematic in the efforts of such people, newly independent, to discover, or to rediscover, their identity, and this problematic has been particularly acute precisely because France has done so much to promote and extend her language where she has been able to, and because so many have been persuaded that French, more than any other language, is the bearer of what is truly human and rational, and the language of the Rights of Man.

metropolitan France in the m a n n e r it is used b y m a n y F r e n c h m e n - a h a l f - t r u t h reflecting, perhaps, the opinion m a n y Frenchmen have of themselves as coherent and orderly, as heirs of the Cartesian geometrical spirit. 3 It was this quality o f French that J o h n Stuart Mill had in m i n d w h e n he w r o t e Tocqueville that, while t h e G e r m a n s and the English m i g h t have m o r e original genius, their ". . . ideas s e l d o m m a k e m u c h w a y in the world until France has recast t h e m in her o w n m o u l d and interpreted t h e m to t h e rest of E u r o p e and even s o m e t i m e s to the very people f r o m w h o m they first c a m e " Alexis de Tocqueville, J. P. M a y e r ed. Œuvres complètes (Paris 1951), D e c e m b e r 30, 1840, vol. VI, pp. 331-3, p. 332. A n o t h e r E u r o p e a n spirit w h o paid France h a n d s o m e praise as a universal educator was Friedrich Nietzsche: " . . . E u r o p e a n noblesse - of feeling, taste, mores, in short in every superior sense - is the w o r k o f F r a n c e . . . " Marianne C o w a n , trans., Beyond Good and Evil (Chicago 1955) p. 191. T h i s w o r k w a s first published in 1886. C o n t e m p o r a n e o u s l y , Léopold Senghor has praised French as precise, nuancé and " c l e a r " because of its syntax; a language w h i c h c o m b i n e d Greek subtlety, Latin rigor and Celtic passion, and w h i c h had a "character of universality, w h i c h corrects [the F r e n c h m a n ' s ] taste for individualism". Culture Française, 1968, no. 2, p. 305. Similarly, J o r g e Carrera Anrade, the A m b a s s a d o r o f Ecuador to Holland, u p o n w i n n i n g a prize in 1968 b e s t o w e d b y the Société des poètes français for his translations into Spanish of Paul Valéry and others, declared that in an age w h e n h u m a n i s m is in peril, the French language was a haven " H u m a n i s m and France g o together", he said. A n d h e observed that m a n y South American poets had learned to speak t h e language o f poetry t h r o u g h French. Culture Française, 1968, no. 2, p. 305. In t h e 1964 reissue ofLittré t h e definition o( Clarté still read: ". . . 5° Netteté, en parlant des idées et des expressions. La génie de n o t r e langue est la c l a r t é . . . " O n e might, with an ironie twist t o his intent, q u o t e Anatole France: " . . . d ' a b o r d la clarté, puis encore la clarté, et enfin la clarté."

Introduction

3

The virtual cult, the mystique, of the French language, whose classical panegyric was Rivarol's, may rest upon something of a confusion, a confusion in identifying the values of the culture of which the language is bearer with the language itself. 4 Thus, "clarity", the ". . . base éternelle de notre langue", according to Rivarol, can be as much a property of any language because any language that is standardized, "modernized" if one will, can serve as a vehicle for any branch of knowledge with equal efficacy. 5 What can be said of French is that it happens to be the language used b y a people w h o value rationality, clarity, mesure, highly. 6 But having said this, one must qualify. There is something to Rivarol's statement that the " . . . man w h o speaks is thus the man w h o thinks out loud: and if one can judge a man by his words, one can also judge a nation by its language . . . a nation as a whole speaks according to its genius". 7 In what follows, I 4

Frederick B o d m e r (1944, p. 347) describes the claim that French is the language of " c l a r i t y " because of any intrinsic merits as " n o n s e n s e " . T h i s point was perhaps first m a d e with r e g a r d to Rivarol b y Joseph Garat in Mercure de France of August 6, 1785 (Rivarol 1784, pp. 67-8). M o r e friendly to the French claim to clarity is F. L. Lucas in his Style ( N e w Y o r k 1962), exerpted in T h o m a s S. Kane and Leonard J. Peters eds. Writing Prose: Techniques and Purposes ( N e w Y o r k 1969), 3rd ed., pp. 422-4. H e cites w i t h favor an a n o n y m o u s F r e n c h m a n saying: " I n France it is the writer that takes the trouble; in G e r m a n y , the reader; in E n g l a n d it is b e t w i x t and b e t w e e n . " Lucas attributes the high quality of French prose to the influence of the literary salons. A balanced and detailed s t u d y o f the role of the ideal of clarity in French language and culture is Daniel M o r n e t (1929). O f Rivarol M o r n e t makes the f o l l o w i n g balanced j u d g m e n t : "If Rivarol could speak of this clarity as a stable, permanent, definitive virtue, it was because he ignored the Middle Ages, disdained the 16th century, did n o t foresee the 19th. Even a superficial study of the w h o l e of o u r literature s h o w s that neither the s a m e need f o r , n o r the s a m e idea of clarity existed. T h i s clarity is not s o u g h t for b y a blind instinct, a hidden impulse of the 'race'. O n e acquires it b y reflective effort . . . " (p. 8). 5

See Gallagher (1969, pp. 58-82), w h o observes that b y o v e r c o m i n g "traditional" hurdles such as diglossia and b y attaining a balance between standardization and adaptability (in b o r r o w i n g foreign w o r d s for example) any language can serve as a vehicle of m o d e r n i t y . Goad (1958, pp. 17-19) considers that a language's " v a l u e " depends u p o n its clearness ( f r e e d o m f r o m ambiguity) and ease (regularity and simplicity of c o n s t r u c t i o n - e . g . the use of prepositions, p r o n o u n s , and auxiliaries in place of the declension of n o u n s and the c o n j u g a tion o f verbs). In contrast to developed languages, " p r i m i t i v e " languages depend u p o n m n e m o n i c and m i m e t i c faculties (rather than logic), are grammatically c o m p l e x t o an outsider, and are overly rich in s y n o n y m s (and weak in abstract terms). With Gallagher he believes that a language's strength depends u p o n its p o w e r to assimilate n e w w o r d s , terms, and concepts, w i t h o u t losing its traditional qualities. 6

T h e converse is also true. Critically, a r e v i e w e r in The Times Literary Supplement, M a y 4, 1962, pp. 291-2, " T h e M y t h of Clarity", and, pessimistically, Simon, in Esprit, (1962) w o n d e r if today French literature, and so French culture, can be called either humanistic or clear. F o r a discussion of clarity as a value of French culture in general see M o r n e t (1929). 7 O n e c o n t e m p o r a r y sociolinguist, observing that there is n o agreement a m o n g authorities as to t h e exact relationship o f language to culture - over the extent to w h i c h the f o r m e r is

4

Introduction

assume Rivarol's notion, vague as it is, to be true, as I also assume that those who speak French easily are in part Frenchmen and partake in France's destiny as a culture. Critics as well as proponents o f what is stereotypically "French" agree that an unusual concern for, and pride in, the French language is a characteristic of this culture. Thomas Hood expressed this with: "Never go to France/Unless you know the lingo/If you do, like m e / Y o u will repent, by j i n g o . " The Spaniard Salvador de Madariaga (1931) sees the characteristic French impulse, which he holds to be le droit, manifested in the concern o f Frenchmen for careful pronunciation, for giving every letter its proper value and for forbidding any caprice in the handling of the language. And an American, Laurence Wylie (1957), notes as characteristically French, even in the provincial village he has studied, reading and writing French correctly. This concern is evident in the countless books Frenchmen have written on the subject, as well as in French periodicals and newspaper columns concerned with the French language. 8 And, o f course, uniquely French is the French Academy, guardian since the seventeenth century o f the purity o f the language. T o many a Frenchman his language is not a "mother tongue" rooted in nature, a medium of personal self-expression, but rather a function o f civilization, a weapon against nature, and to talk correctly is a part of social behavior. The Frenchman tends to see his language as fixed, operating bearer o r part and parcel o f the latter - suggests, nevertheless: "Standing in a central position within the f r a m e w o r k o f culture, language is holistically concerned with all facets o f it, reflecting like a prism the separate elements that make up its s u m " (Gallagher 1969, pp. 8 7 - 8 ) . Similar in approach are the " N e o - H u m b o l d t i a n s " (after Wilhelm von H u m b o l d t ) w h o see language as manifesting particular traits o f a culture, and as " r e l a t i o n a l " rather than an independent cultural p h e n o m e n o n - " M i d w a y " , as Harold Basilius puts it, " b e t w e e n o b j e c tive reality and man's conceptualization o f i t " (p. 4 5 8 in " N e o - H u m b o l d t i a n

Ethno-

Linguistics", pp. 4 4 7 - 5 9 in Fishman ed. 1968). T h e first important figure to see the significance o f language as culture as well as a tool o f culture was probably J o h a n Gottfried Herder (d. 1803). See E r g a n g (1931, pp. 149-52). A language, in short, not only conveys information, but, in its structure and its vocabulary, it embodies the values and underlying concepts o f a culture. In Royal Commission

of Inquiry on Bilingualism

and Biculturalism

(1967-70), the authors

share m y assumption as to the close connection between culture and language. In a special study for the C o m m i s s i o n , R . L. Watts (I: p. x x i x ) argues that language inter alia, " b y its structure, shapes the w a y in which men order their thoughts coherently. It is language that makes possible social organisation . . . " And another authority quoted (II: p. 8) states that language " . . . is the reflection and mirror o f those w h o speak it, the vehicle o f their thoughts and d r e a m s . " 8

Such as Culture Française,

and Vie et Langage.

O n e o f the most authoritative newspaper

c o l u m n s was, before his death, that o f R. le Bidois in Le Monde called " L a Défense delà langue française". H e was succeeded by Jacques Cellard.

Introduction

5

according to universal laws o f logic, not as dynamic and ever-changing, French, to such Frenchmen is not something created by the individual; it is something he enters into possession of. This is, o f course, the classicist tradition and while this tradition has had its rebels such as Hugo and Baudelaire, as will be discussed, the classical ideal still forms part of the French collective unconscious. 9 As characteristic as the concern o f many Frenchmen for the purity o f their language - and their concern lest it become corrupt - is a widely held conviction that in teaching others French they are both serving a mission civilisatrice, however much in recent times this term might evoke smiles or scorn, and, at the same time, strengthening France's political role in the world at large. 10 A random article in Le Monde (February 7-8, 1965) boasts of French being the official language o f twenty-one countries. It quotes Jean Basdevant, Director-General of Cultural and Technical Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as saying: "Today for one hundred and fifty-five million men French has become the maternal language, the language o f common usage, or the 'language of advancement' [promotion] that is to say the language whose acquisition will mark the social and intellectual progress to which these people a s p i r e . . . " The article goes on to quote Rakoto Ratsimamanga, the Ambassador of Madagascar to Paris, as having said at the same meeting (of U N E S C O in 1965): "Might the use of French signify an intellectual neo-colonialism? The usage o f a language of universal character does not constitute a subordination. On the contrary, it can only enlarge the horizon which an overly strict nationalism tends to diminish £faire rétrécir). " As will be seen, in the course o f this study, the expression o f such sentiments is very common indeed, both on the part of Frenchmen and o f those who have come under France's linguistic and cultural sway, as, conversely are expressions o f resentment by others over France's linguistic and cultural presumptions also easily documented. As will be seen, the "Négritude" movement o f Africans and Caribbeans was ' I owe a debt in this paragraph to Sieburg (1932, pp. 134—9). This English version ofCott in Frankreich ? is to be treated cautiously because o f its passionate mixture o f sardonicism alternating with francophilia. A brilliant discussion o f the classicist ideal is that o f Guérard (1957). B y the term "death" in his title, Guérard surely did not intend any definitive demise. In any case Mornet (1929), whilst admitting the limitations o f the classical ideal, defends its continuity and its value in modern French life (pp. 354-8). 10 French books on this subject are legion. They are almost all written by enthusiasts. Among recent works are Duron (1963), Viatte (1969), Blancpain (1967 and 1974), andBalous (1970). Schoell (1936) is still o f value. The idea oi the mission civilisatrice is discussed at some length in Gordon (1962, ch. II).

6

Introduction

in part a protest against the French view that its black charges had n o original culture of their own. In her study of the movement, Lilyan Kesteloot cites a n u m b e r of chauvinistic statements by Frenchmen that help to explain w h y Négritude and similar movements, as resentment, arose. An eminent cleric in the volume, L'Homme de couleur (Paris 1939), stated: " N o t h i n g is m o r e moving than this greatness of the Frenchman, taking the Black brother by the hand and helping h i m to rise . . . " And another cleric, in the same volume, speaks o f " . . . the state of intellectual degradation and moral depravity in which whites found the African populations" (Kesteloot 1972, pp. 59, 230, 289, 357-9). Auguste Viatte, a distinguished French administrator and writer, in his Histoire littéraire de l'Amérique française, des origines à 1950 (1954) w r o t e of the "glorious dest i n y " of Canada and the West Indies as being t o "preserve the traditions and the language of France", and of France as the "greatest country of the Black man . . . " (ibid., pp. 24-5). And Roger Caillois, a well-known literary critic, has written that ". . . only the West is capable of t h o u g h t . . . At the limits of the Western world begins the dark k i n g d o m of primitive t h o u g h t . . . " (ibid., p. 101). 11 T h e French mission civilisatrice is related to a subconscious faith that France is bearer of the universal idea that h u m a n nature is everywhere and at all times basically the same, that its laws have been most fully realized by France and that, therefore, one does n o t speak of "French civilization", but of civilization simply (in contrast to G e r m a n Kultur, for example, which Germans hold to be rooted in the particular history and character of the G e r m a n people uniquely). 1 2 And m a n y French expansionists have argued that an important, if not the most important, expression of the mission civilisatrice is the conscious diffusion of the French language as widely in 11

F r o m "Illusions à r e b o u r s " Nouvelle Revue Française, no. 6, D e c - J a n 1955. See Curtius (1962), D u h a m e l (1944), and Grasset in Sieburg (1932). Jules Michelet (d. 1874) came close t o believing that the "pilot o f the ship o f h u m a n i t y " , in his words, was France, the leader o f a E u r o p e that would civilize the world. R e n é Sedillot, L'Histoire n 'a pas de sens (Paris 1965, p. 32). A n d it was in this spirit that A n d r é Malraux in m o r e recent days boasted that w i t h the Maisons de culture which h e had inspired to o p e n in different parts of France, "France est redevenue le premier pays culturel du m o n d e " (Lacouture 1973, p. 376). O f this French narcissism in regard to culture, T . E. L a w r e n c e once w r o t e amusingly. " T h e French, t h o u g h they started w i t h a similar doctrine [as the British] o f the Frenchman as the perfection of m a n k i n d ( d o g m a a m o n g s t t h e m not secret instinct), w e n t on, contrarily, to encourage their subjects t o imitate them; since, even if they could never attain the true level, yet their virtue w o u l d be greater as they approached it. W e looked u p o n imitation as a p a r o d y ; they as a c o m p l i m e n t " (Lawrence 1952, p. 355). A n excellent study of m o d e r n France, with a s t r o n g emphasis o n cultural factors, is that o f H o f f m a n n (1974). 12

Introduction

7

the world as is possible. As Léopold de Saussure (1899), an opponent o f the civilizing impulse o f his countrymen put it, this impulse, rooted in eighteenth-century Natural Philosophy and the Revolutionary tradition, assumed, unscientifically he felt, evolution to be uniform, and moral and cultural differences to be "superficialities", and was a mental habit o f "classical Latinism" o f which the French were the worst offenders (see also Curtin 1971, pp. 85-9). This tendency to "uniformity, simplicity and symmetry" Saussure contrasted with Anglo-Saxon realism and racist segregationism, o f both o f which he approved. French linguistic expansionism is as much a reality today, although expressed and promoted differently, as it was in the heyday o f nineteenth-century imperialism, even after France has shed almost all o f her empire. And this linguistic expansionism is not only a reflex, or a cause supported by private groups - it is self-conscious, national, and official. Jean de Broglie, as Secretary of State to the Premier in Charge of Algerian Affairs in 1964, may have only been indulging in a boutade when he said o f the Algerians: "Let them talk nonsense so long as they say it in F r e n c h . . . " (Le Monde, July 3, 1964). But the Secretary for State in Charge o f Cooperation was in earnest when he said before the National Assembly: The first objective o f my department is to promote the penetration o f the French language and culture (favoriser la pénétration) into the countries o f Black Africa and Madagascar . . . The second objective that we propose is o f an economic order [to promote French commercial and industrial interests] . . . I say it without any shame. This involves nothing illegitimate or sordid . . . It is the duty of France, as well as in the interest o f the States to whom she extends her aid, that relations be established upon mutual advantage — this constitutes the best guarantee for material progress and the most certain assurance o f continuity (A.-M. Goguel in Esprit 1970, pp. 74-5).

And Suzanne Balous (1970, pp. 180-6) observes that the basic principles of policy repeatedly defended by the official Haut-Comité pour la Défense et l'Expansion de la Langue Française are the following: first, to make French the mass language o f 100-50 million people, particularly in North Africa and Black Africa; second, to strive to have French adopted as the language o f the Common Market; and third, to make French the first living foreign language (on a par with English if necessary) in as many nations of the world as possible.13 13 The Haut Comité is discussed below. Pierre Gascar, a Goncourt prize-winner, states: "There is not one of our rulers who, since the beginnings of decolonization, has not in his inner soul considered francophonia to be a Trojan horse." Le Monde, June 10, 1971. About half o f France's foreign assistance is dedicated to education.

8

Introduction

But many hurdles face the French linguistic expansionists, hurdles of which the authors I have cited are well aware. One aim of the present study is to deal with these problems here briefly summarized: the spread of English as the language of the most advanced industrial and financial power today (symbolic of the crisis is the often expressed anxiety that the language of computers will be English); the entry into the political city of masses of the Third World for w h o m the French language of the élite may only seem a form of "neo-colonialism" and who often seek to re-establish the native language functionally as well as officially; and the possibility entertained with consternation by many Frenchmen that even within the hexagon the French language is losing its efficacy, its "clarity", as it is invaded by English vocabulary and even subjected to structural changes. Some Frenchmen feel, also, that the culture itself that the language is meant to embody and express is becoming obscurantist, negativist and provincial, and hence the "universality" of the French language is prejudiced. 14 And there are Frenchmen who have challenged the premises of the linguistic and cultural expansionists, who have questioned the often expressed view that the French are culturally generous; others, commercially minded argue that French is the bearer of humanistic values and English the medium of practical and business matters; that the values conveyed through and embodied in French are of "universal" value and that resistance to them only reflects fanaticism and self-defeating provincialism. A m o n g others, Paul Valéry has mocked his people's pretensions to universality; Jacques Berque and Paul Mus have suggested this "univefsalism" to be a flagrant case of European ethnocentrism; and to contemporary French regional nationalists - Basque, Breton, Catalan or Occitan 14 O n this last point see Simon in Esprit (1962, pp. 845-66). Foreigners w h o have made similar observations are Ivan Boldizsàr, a Hungarian intellectual, and James Baldwin. Boldizsàr protests against ". . . the claustrophobia of French intellectuals, their culture enclosed in a vase, their 'francocentrisme', their impermeability, all that they themselves call their hermetism, o f which they are increasingly proud" ( Vie et Langage, August 1970, p. 449). N o t e that this is quoted in an organ o f French linguistic expansionism to serve as a warning. Baldwin upon his first trip to France found the French exhausted through having had to sustain so complex a culture so long - they were n o w characterized by ". . . fatigue . . . and, quite probably paranoia" (1955, p. 140). But this was written shortly after World War II. Enlightening, and very amusing to read, is the section on language in de Gramont (1969, ch. 5). Gramont concludes pessimistically: "The mystique that it [French] is a superior language can only help embalm it in textbooks. Fifty years from n o w French school children may be translating Montaigne into Atlantic sabir rather than Livy into French" (p. 297). For a clever if dyspeptic picture o f the meretricious in the "myth" o f France, see pp. 64—7 and 938—45 in William Gaddis' novel The Recognitions (Cleveland 1962).

9

Introduction

the French presumption to universality is as absurd and murderous within France as it has been among those she has colonized. It would be incorrect, then, to assume that Frenchmen universally tend to be intransigently assimilationist, even if many of the men considered in the present book can be so characterized. Even in the field of colonialism, as recent scholarship indicates, the view that Frenchmen overseas have been invariably missionaries of their culture and of their language needs to be modified. 15 The French model was neither imposed in the colonies without modification, nor were efforts invariably made to reduce indigenous cultures and languages to a tabula rasa. A m o n g the reasons for the limits to France's assimilatory thrust, in the past, were practical hurdles - such as the expense entailed - but also, especially at the turn of the century, the influence of racist social Darwinist notions encouraged by writers like Gustave Le Bon (author of Les Lois psychologiques

de l'évolution

des peuples

1894) and L é o p o l d d e Saussure

who argued that indefinite tutelage rather than cultural transformation was needed in overseas territories because races differed, and because French structures were unsuitable for non-Western peoples, Africans in particular. The approach most favored was that of Association which in effect involved the enculturation of a small élite and the training of subordinate functionaries, leaving the masses to their traditional patterns. The leading spokesman for Association, as opposed to Assimilation, was Jules Harmand, author of Domination et colonisation (Paris 1910).16 The actual behavior of French teachers and administrators may have, in general, tended in the direction of assimilationism, as rebel nationalists were to claim, but in all fairness it must be added that in recent times, 15 The traditional cliché of French colonialism as unequivocally assimilationist appears in M u m f o r d and Orde-Brown (1937). The revisionist position is argued by Gifford and Weiskel in "African Education in a Colonial Context: French and British Styles" in Gifford and Louis, eds. (1971, pp. 663-711). As the authors observe, between 1890 and 1945 the French sought to provide Africans with a simplified adaptation of the French system of education rather than to "assimilate" them. It was partly African nationalistic pressure after World War II that led the French to provide Africans in increasing numbers with education according to French standards. But the authors do admit that the tendency of French teachers f r o m the start was to inculcate in their charges admiration for French values and culture and to disparage the indigenous culture. Yvonne Turin (1971) provides further evidence that not all Frenchmen are automatically assimilationist. In Algeria, during the years she studies, efforts were made to introduce modern methods into Arabic educational milieux without insisting upon French as the necessary medium of instruction. Such efforts were abandoned because of resistance to the Christian intruder, not out of an initial desire to eradicate Arabic culture. Turin's thesis is supported by Ageron (1968, ch. XII). 16

See Curtin (1971, introduction); Betts (1961), Deschamps (1953).

10

Introduction

especially after World War II, often the pressure to universalize education a m o n g the indigenous, and to do so according to the highest French standards, came often from the indigenous themselves. In the present book reference will be made to the varied reactions of peoples, newly independent f r o m French colonial control, to the French system of education. But this will be incidental to our main theme, which is the French language as problematic and as symbol. Education and language are, obviously, interconnected subjects since education is the principal means of inculcating language, but it is quite possible to distinguish the t w o and to keep the French language but modify or transform the French system of education to meet the needs of development, as Algeria and Senegal are contemplating and tentatively attempting. But while education and language are separate issues logically, they are often affectively interrelated because the hold of the French spell involves, along with language, regard for the institutions and values of the métropole. The French system of education outside the hexagon certainly deserves a special treatment in its own right, but I will limit myself here to only a few general remarks. Even with modifications of the system before and after the May 1968 revolts the French system of education has tended to be relatively rigid and magisterial. 17 It is highly competitive, selective, with a strong emphasis on precision in language and in expression. At its best it produces men w h o are highly articulate and analytical. O n the other hand, in the eyes of its critics, it pays insufficient attention to cultivating individual initiative and to fostering habits of participation, cooperation, and of "internalized" obedience. It serves, also, to develop a man w h o tends to think ideologically in totalist and absolutist terms, rather than one w h o pragmatically seeks out partial solutions and who is prepared to compromise. 1 8 Such a system of education, its critics have maintained, is not ideally suited to newly independent nations whose leaders seek to foster democra17

For criticisms of the French system of education see the various articles in H o f f m a n n et al. 1963), and H o f f m a n n (1974, pp. 123-31 and ch. 6) which provides a far-reaching analysis of the May 1968 days. Prost (1968) is useful for an overall view of the history of French educational values, and of attempted structural reforms. 18 H o f f m a n n et al. (1963, p. 116), write satirically that the French system can produce a graduate with " . . . a mind so sharp and critical that he can push arguments until any relation to reality is a coincidence, and any chance of accommodation with other people's arguments a miracle". Male (1971) describes French secondary education as "plagued with what the French reformers call scholasticism - that is, an overemphasis on verbalism, on memory work, on examinations, and on the past".

Introduction

11

tic participation and to develop technical talents useful in dealing empirically and cooperatively with problems o f development and of "modernization". The French system at its best tends to be aristocratic in its emphasis on perfection in expression, for example, and so to be too great a luxury for nations whose masses are often largely illiterate. While its Cartesian emphasis on the analytical and rational might be considered a valuable weapon against regressive traditionalism, the problem is that products o f the system are often sharply cut o f f from their own cultures, are deracinated. And while the emphasis in many French-type schools upon high cultures provides a link with a "universal" culture, the heavy emphasis upon French culture and French models, may tend to hinder a larger world orientation. Finally, a danger o f preserving the French system without maintaining its high standards o f pedagogy often leads to an exaggeration o f the worst in this system, its tendency to focus overly upon final examinations, to encourage rote learning, and to produce students with an undue respect for the text and the teachers, students who rely upon authority rather than upon empirical experience. One purpose o f this essay is to discuss the French language not in terms o f linguistics but rather as a symbol and a weapon o f French prestige and influence abroad and o f pride at home. The emphasis is upon the period following 1930, after which the French language, to them the international language that it had become in the eighteenth century, was challenged by radically new cirumstances - among these the Depression, the rise o f nationalism in the Third World, the humiliation o f World War II, the collapse o f Western empires, and the emergence o f super powers to assume the roles Great Britain and France had once played as world leaders. N o longer could the defenders o f the universal role o f French rest on laurels won in the eighteenth century, no longer could they hope to see French remain an important international language without a deliberate effort to defend and diffuse it. A second purpose o f this study is to consider the drama o f peoples who through history have become involved with France culturally as well as politically — an involvement symbolized and given continuity as heritage through the use o f the French language - and for whom, today, this language constitutes either a source o f identity or a problem o f identity, this depending upon whether the use o f French is willed as a legacy to be permanently maintained; only maintained for want o f a viable alternative; or is rejected as a source o f alienation. While the use o f language as a means o f making friends and influencing people economically and politically is

12

Introduction

considered in both parts of this book, the stress is upon the question o f national identity as the title indicates. Identity is an uneasy term, but one inevitable in the present context. H o w e v e r mercurial the term and resistant to precise definition, it requires discussion. Seen f r o m the outside, objectively, the identity o f an individual is the s u m of the characteristics, interdependent and interacting, w h i c h define him. These characteristics include physical ones w h i c h make up his physical identity, and social characteristics — those aspects o f the individual resulting f r o m socialization!, learning, initiation (patterns o f behavior, language, etc.) w h i c h constitute social identity. Abstracted f r o m physical and social characteristics peculiar to any one individual, the identity that remains is the "stereotype" a foreigner to the individual's c o m m u n i t y may see —what Peter Berger calls the type, the socially produced being divorced f r o m individual identity (Berger and Luckman 1967, pp. 173—4). In the process o f social identification - learning, initiation, education — language plays a crucial role. According to Berger, again, it " . . . constitutes the m o s t important content and the m o s t important instrument o f socialization" (ibid., p. 133, see also pp. 34-6). 1 9 T h r o u g h communication learning takes place, and the individual realizes his identity through expressing it and seeing it mirrored in the responses o f others. Just as important, through 19

A c c o r d i n g t o Erikson (1968), speech defines t h e child, and serves as a " p a c t " w i t h his c o m m u n i t y — it is of crucial importance in his ego development. Deutsch (1953) is a fine i n t r o d u c t i o n to t h e subject of language as a c o m p o n e n t of g r o u p behavior. A n excellent critical discussion of m y t h s about language a m o n g nationalists is that of Shafer (1956, especially pp. 4 7 - 5 0 , 7 7 - 8 1 , 2 3 3 - 5 ) . A sympathetic discussion of nationalism is that o f G e l l n e r (1964, pp. 147-78). A classic statement of the m y t h that authenticity and even greatness depend u p o n a people cultivating a n d using their ancestral language is J o h a n n Gottlieb Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation (English translation b y R. F. Jones and G. H. Turnbull, C h i c a g o and L o n d o n 1922). These Addresses w e r e delivered in 1807-1808 to arouse G e r m a n s to react against French cultural and political superimposition d u r i n g the time of Napoleon. O n t h e crucial role of languages in t h e rise o f nineteenth-century nationalism see N a m i e r (1962, pp. 203-15). C o n c e r n with the social and political role of language has blossomed in recent years. See t h e essays in Fishman (1972a) and several recent conferences o n the subject, for e x a m p l e those held in Quebec, M a r c h 1972 on "Multilingual States" and in O t t a w a in S e p t e m b e r 1972 o n "Linguistic and Cultural D i v e r s i t y " (both summarized in A b o u 1973, pp. 99-107). U s e of t h e same language with equal fluency does not, obviously, assure a c o m m o n " i d e n t i t y " b e t w e e n peoples. Sylvie Bagros, in a case study o f thirteen French w o m e n married to Lebanese husbands, for example, f o u n d that m o s t of t h e w o m e n , usually to their regret, discovered that their husbands, while completely French in life-style in France, changed character u p o n r e t u r n i n g to Lebanon. In most of the cases they adopted the patterns of the extended as o p p o s e d t o the nuclear family. " L o r s q u ' u n e française épouse u n libanais: étude de cas" (Travaux et Jours, J u l - S e p 1974, pp. 39-60).

Introduction

13

language, past experiences are stored to serve, when needed, practical and emotive uses. Identity is, of course, more than external, more than a pattern into which the individual is molded. The individual is also subject, conscious, and willful. He may accept the identity a society has bestowed upon him, the roles it encourages him to assume, and he may choose to help perpetuate the community through joining in the identification and initiation of others into it. O r the individual may choose to reject his social identity, and migrate psychologically or physically to a different community, to a new ambience, and seek to modify, within the limits of possibility, his first identity. In either case he needs a community of some sort in order to remain human, to mature as a human being, to sustain his sense of identity (Erikson 1964, pp. 91-107. "Identity and Uprootedness in O u r Time"; 1968; and in Sills ed.). This sense of identity is nourished, sustained and enriched, according to Erik Erikson, the outstanding student of this perilous subject, through life-crises that follow upon one another in the process of maturation and "beyond". As the individual reaches each crisis — there are eight identified by Erikson - the individual psyche is challenged, and where this challenge is not met successfully the psyche can become pathological, alienated, destructive, and there might result a "loss" of personal identity. O n the other hand, where these challenges are met successfully, a person's sense of identity will be enriched - he will become confident in the role he plays in society, will be at "peace with" his society and himself, will experience a feeling of "wholeness", be able to say with William James: "This is thereal me!" (Erikson 1964, p. 97). Writes Erikson also, " T o be a person identical with oneself presupposes a basic trust in one's origins and the courage to emerge from them". That is, growth involves both adventure and continuity (ibid.). The context of this individual identification is the community (or communities) in which the child happens to be born. The community and the individual are dialectically related to one another. The community nourishes, teaches, and initiates the individual, and the individual in turn gives the community existence, legitimization, and its own identity. In reality, of course, the individual grows up as part of several communities family, tribe, school, business, etc. In this essay I deal with a particular community, the nation, a community relatively new in history, and with that part of the individual's objective and subjective identity which is "national", which involves a sense of "national identity", and with

14

Introduction

"nationalism", a particularly strong if not exclusive identification by the individual with the nation. Where the nation is independent and prosperous the individual will usually be able to follow his private pursuits without anxiety, but where the nation is felt to be exploited, threatened, kept in bondage, "outside of history" (ibid., p. 87; Fanon 1961) 2 0 - where the individual, insofar as he identified with such a nation feels he is Pattens rather than Agens - he will tend to become rebellious and, in cases of considerable frustration, "totalist" in his ideological orientation (Erikson 1964, p. 87).21 Parallels between individual and group psychology are, of course, dangerous, but one might say safely that as individual identification demands an environment that is trusted, so does national identification require a national environment in which the individual has confidence and for which he has respect. Problems caused by crises of national identity can prove as pathological as can those of individual identification. The nation may be defined as a community of people who form a nationality and have been persuaded that this nationality constitutes an exclusive grouping (usually in distinction to some other grouping) with the right to political independence under a sovereign state. The nationality in turn is a community that is usually larger than groupings such as extended families, tribes, villages, or urban communes, but smaller than communities such as churches or empires with universalist claims or pretensions. The nationality is the historical product of at least one, usually more, of the following objective factors: a common language, cohabitation over time in a common territory, a common historical experience and memory, and common religious affiliation. The nationality may or may not be persuaded by its élites to opt for nationhood. If it should become self-conscious of its identity and seek to embody this identity institutionally in a state, it then becomes a nation, either enjoying or seeking to enjoy national sovereignty. While such an option is a matter of will, of choice, it is not necessarily so of the masses of the community, at least initially. An élite, conscious that such a choice is possible, or an élite placed in a position of power sensing an opportunity, takes the lead, and through education,

20

Edward Said, in a forthcoming article tentatively entitled "Arabic Prose and Prose Fiction since 1948: An Introduction" will argue that a basic characteristic of modern Arab writers is their desire to forge a "historical possibility" after the blocking of Arab identity through the creation of Israel in 1948. 21 Isaacs (1975) is very useful on dimensions of group identity.

Introduction

15

propaganda, example, persuades the nationality that it has a "national identity". 2 2 Nationalities have existed since time immemorial, but nationalism is a recent phenomenon in history, an ideology that has seemed increasingly attractive as the world has been transformed through industrialism since the end of the nineteenth century and has experienced the sweep of democratic doctrines. Economic transformation has served to integrate previously isolated groupings of villages and towns, and the rise of democracy has brought into the political arena the previously excluded masses. Nationalism first arose in the West after princes and kings had constructed integrated sovereign units (regna) through providing superior justice and greater security than had feudalism, had rationalized authority by drawing upon Roman law, and had, consciously or not, given their charges linguistic unification and, partly through this, a sense of a c o m m o n identity. With the "democratic revolution" in the Atlantic World, peoples began to regard themselves rather than their kings as the real sovereigns, and nations came into being in the modern sense (Palmer 1959, 1964). Through example, stimulus, and physical imposition (by Napoleon's armies for example) Europeans to the East of the Rhine began to adopt national identities, and the decline of empires (Habsburg, Romanov, Ottoman) began. This same process was extended to the rest of the world in large part in the shape of Western imperialism. National identity, as discussed, implies a nationality, and this in turn exists usually where there is a sense of commonality because of a common language. It is this dimension of the identity of a nationality that nationalists have considered, in most cases, to be the crucial component of national identity and which they have often deified in the process of national identification. The nationality as Robert Lafont puts it can be seen as a grouping whose "sign" is a language which has become stabilized and common to a grouping over a period of time (Lafont 1968, pp. 44—7). When there is "a massive accord by its users regarding their linguistic identity" the "sign" tends to become the "identity itself'. Thus is formed the ethnic group, the "pré-nation" which élites or revolutionary poets and scholars persuade to become a "nation". This has been the general pattern in the West. As Lafont also explains, the sentiment of nationality usually becomes a

On the role of subjective will in the rise of nationalism see Kohn (Sills, ed.) as well as the large number of other works the author has dedicated to the subject of nationalism.

16

Introduction

conscious t h r o u g h struggle against an O t h e r with w h o m one is in economic, geopolitical, or religious conflict. Similarly, the sentiment of nationhood arises because of conflict with the Other. For some of the reasons already given, since the nineteenth century, "language differences have taken on an implication of antagonism", as E d w a r d Sapir (1933) puts it. T h e Other, for most eastern Europeans, was France during the period of the French Revolution, and it was in G e r m a n y that France first came to be widely seen as the hostile Other, this to stimulate the sort of aggressive nationalism which has become c o m m o n throughout the world today. A m o n g the prophets of this nationalism was Ernest Moritz Arndt w h o included in his popular song Das Deutschen Vaterland the lines " W o jeder Franzmann heißet Feind . . . " , and w h o argued the purity of German as an Ursprache, the language of an unmongrelized people, an e m b o d i m e n t of this people's genius (see Kohn 1967, pp. 255-8; Fishman 1972b, p. 53). Similar sentiments were expressed by Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich L u d w i g Jahn and many others. This sort of vengeful nationalism usually appears where the creation of the state follows the appearance of the nation and is the product of a sense of frustration, if not inferiority (Fishman 1972b, p. 24 ff.). At its worst such nationalism becomes "totalist", exclusivist, and dangerous to the ideals of h u m a n brotherhood. O n the other hand it is this resentment and revolt against the O t h e r which often stimulates the making of a nation, by engendering the necessary "asabbiya" (the binding élan of a group) of which the Arab medieval scholar Ibn Khaldun has written. In the case of s o m e South American republics, Robert E. Scott has argued that nationbuilding has remained uncompleted because of the lack of such stimulus f r o m colonialist rulers, or dangerous enemies (Deutsch and Foltz eds. 1963, pp. 73-83). In Mexico, for example, he believes, only ten percent of the people are active participants in the affairs of state - the rest remain passive consumers rather than producers. Whatever the merits or demerits of nationalism m i g h t be f r o m the perspective of humanity it remains a fact of contemporary life, and its prophets as suggested have seen, and preached, it wedded to and embodied in languages. M o r e extravagant nationalists have claimed eternity and purity for their languages, and seen them as the embodiments of the national " g e n i u s " of their peoples. B u t as also indicated language is, in fact, only one dimension of national identity and there are cases where it has not been the crucial dimension. Switzerland would not exist were other dimensions not sometimes of greater importance, the United States with

Introduction

17

its prosperity and opportunities, would not have attracted so many millions to abandon their languages in order to adopt a new identity, and Israel would never have been created. And while language may be the most widespread dimension of national identity, even where language has been o f crucial importance, as in the case of Arab nationalism, to give one example, it has been rivalled by the religious dimension of Islam (in face o f the Christian Westerner as Other), and by territorial loyalties, for example, in the cases of the Arabic-speaking Lebanese Christians and o f Syrians in recent disputes with Iraq. And, as will be seen later, even in the case o f France, the midwife o f Western nations as she has been called, linguistic unification was by no means completed internally before the grande nation embarked upon its wars o f liberation. In the case o f Black Africa where borders have been among the cruelest cases of the "rape o f geography by history" (Jacques Ancel's phrase), nations, in the legal sense, have been created where no common language other than that, on an élite level, o f the colonizer existed to help form a nationality - the vernacular language, rather than being a component of national identity, serves in most o f these linguistically heterogenous countries as a force for disruption and loss o f national identity (ibid., pp. 95—116 and Fishman et al., eds. 1968). In fact, in the cases o f many new nations seeking to develop a sense of national identity among their people, leaders are confronted with a challenge which the older nations o f the West did not have to face, the challenge o f adopting, standardizing, and universalizing a language which will both serve development and modernization and at the same time have legitimacy, "authenticity", in the eyes and the masses. By authenticity I mean conformity to one's heritage, historical and linguistic - to one's culture in short. This culture may, however, be incompatible with modernity unless fundamentally transformed. Societally, the inherited traditions may be tribalist and religion may serve as a conservative barrier to innovation. And the language may be unstandardized, or the nation involved may be linguistically heterogeneous without any common lingua franca, and so be handicapped in regard to modernization, as Jonathan Pool has argued from the historical record, because o f the correlation between development and linguistic conformity, and between linguistic heterogeneity and "backwardness" (Fishman ed. 1971-72, II: pp. 213-30). 2 3 23 See also Tilly in McKinney and Tiryakian eds. (1970, pp. 441-3) for a note on the way, as society and government become more integrated and complex, there is a tendency for the controlling élite's form of language to become the language ofurbatiitas and to be accepted by the masses as standard, as the desirable medium of discourse.

18

Introduction

In principle any language can be modernized, standardized, enriched in vocabulary to serve modernity. There are no limits to the number of languages (and so nationalities and nations) that can be formed - between 1800 and 1900, Karl Deutsch (1942) observes, the number of European nations with full-fledged languages rose from 16 to 30; from 1900 to 1937, it rose to 53. Modernization, then, as far as language is concerned, — and Fishman (1972b, pp. 9-10) has urged that language is the easiest way to approach the task because it is more easily manipulated than other dimensions of culture such as religion - requires linguistic "planning" - language is, as Herbert Kelman puts it, "both the major focus and goal of ethno-cultural integration" (op. cit., preface, p. x), and so of modernization. Where the nation already possesses a common language it can modernize without worry over the problem of authenticity, but where it does not, as is the case with many new nations, the problem of authenticity must be faced, and planning must take this problem into account. One solution is to maintain and universalize the language of the previous colonizer - to make it the language of the nation. But this presents embarrassing problems of pride and of legitimacy. A way around has been to try to persuade the people that one's authentic heritage - at least that which one wishes to sustain — can be fully expressed through the medium of a language that is universal, and so the property of all men. President Senghor of Senegal, and other Black African leaders have attempted to do this. Another possibility is to run the risk of tribal tensions, in some countries, and opt for the most widely spread vernacular; extend this through education after it has been standardized; and then claim retrospectively that this has been the language of authenticity from the beginning. Of this latter procedure Fishman says, "nationalist language planning is an organized self-fulfilling prophecy" (ibid., p. 73).24 In a sense this is what French nationalists have done, and this has been done, spectacularly, in the case of Turkey where myths such as the Sun Language Theory (the theory that the original language of Man was Turkish), allows for uninhibited borrowing of foreign words since, originally, they derived from what was Turkish anyway. These are some of the problems, here stated by way of introduction in a 24

An interesting parallel to the issue of modernity versus authenticity appeared in a recent debate among black leaders over whether they should opt for marxist revolution and play d o w n specific black values and traditions, or the converse, whether to direct revolution against capitalism rather than against racism (The International Herald Tribune, May 7, 1975).

Introduction

19

cursory and abstract manner, that will be considered in this essay. Terms such as identity, national identity and authenticity, it is hoped, will become clearer as they are discussed in greater detail and more concretely. In the case of the French language, in particular, ever since the "awakening of the nations" in the nineteenth century, the acceptance of the right of self-determination of peoples has created an ironic situation. If selfdetermination involves replacing an international language, or the language of a previous dominating power, with one's own mother tongue, in the perpetuation of French outside the hexagon as an official language and the language of education, France would seem to be contradicting the spirit of another part of her identity, the promise of the French Revolution. 25 And equally ironically, many newly independent regimes in seeking to maintain the French language and culture in order to avoid regressing into what they imagine to be a condition of provincialism, may be settling for a condition that has been described by its critics as "neocolonialism'. It is to an understanding of such dilemmas that the present study intends to be a contribution, and more broadly to an understanding of the experience of Western decolonization and its aftermath - an aftermath which General de Gaulle predicted and considered just, but one which like many Westerners he regarded with a certain sadness because it represented a withdrawal from a universality that might have been. In many respects this claim to universality has been forfeited by the West, but in other respects it continues to be a dimension of our times, as can be seen in the particular case of the fate of the French language, the language of the nation that has been most self-consciously and fervently the advocate of Western values, of course preferably in their French embodiment. It is also the language that is bearer of the culture that has penetrated most deeply into the patterns of non-Western peoples and so constitutes for many of them a deeper problematic than elsewhere. Conversely, for many Frenchmen the loss of empire today constitutes an identity problem as her role in the world becomes circumscribed. Like the British after the end of their empire, many Frenchmen are in search of a new role, to paraphrase Dean Acheson. The approach in this essay is thematic and not comprehensive. The 25

Symbolic of this irony was an incident that occurred on April 10, 1954 during the ferocious battle for Eliane I at Dien Bien Phu. When French Vietnamese defending the hill began to sing the Marseillaise defiantly, the attacking Vietnamese Communists, lacking battle hymns of their own, responded with the same French anthem, as a song of revolution (Fall 1967, p. 235).

20

Introduction

focus is upon cases which best illustrate or involve each of the themes discussed, France's linguistic identity, its formation, its crisis and its resurgence; the waning and consolidation of her linguistic presence in various parts of the world; the challenge within France, itself, and Belgium of regionalism; the French language as identity shield; the French language as problematic and as heritage. More broadly this study purports to be a contribution to the study of French culture in a period of decolonization, as well as to the study of national identity, and the relation of language to national identity. Much of this essay is cast in the past tense with 1975 the year of vantage - even though much of what is said will be current at the point of publication. This seemed to be wisest considering the fluidity of the subject and the rapidity with which the various contexts considered change and assumed new forms.

CHAPTER 1

France's Linguistic Identity

" I t is not a simple 'I will it' o f Francis I, o r o f any other king, that explains the miracle o f this linguistic conversion o f the Midi. T h e southern world did not just obey the cry o f the herald, reading, after three blasts o f the trumpet, the edict o f Villers-Cotterets to prostrate populations. It was the grandeur, the prosperity, the vitality o f a France (to) which the whole Midi, already a part in fact and by will, Wished n o w to be joined in language . : (Febvre 1953, p. 181).

The emergence o f the French language out o f Latin; the various dialectical forms it took; the ascendancy of thè dialect o f Paris over the other dialects; its standardization in the seventeenth century; its acceptance in the eighteenth century by much o f Europe as the leading language of Western culture; and its radiation beyond Europe through the establishment o f France's two empires, constitute the drama o f the formation of France's linguistic identity. 1 French originally may be considered to have been the forms o f Latin spoken by the Celtic-speaking inhabitants o f Gaul whose conquest by Rome, begun in 154 BC, was completed by Julius Caesar in 57 BC. While Celtic remained the language o f the masses,2 Latin became the language o f 1 The classic work is that o f Brunot (1905-1953) which carries the story to 1815; later volumes are being completed by Charles Bruneau. I have made particular use of his up-todate work (Bruneau 1956). A useful short description o f the French language at each stage o f its development since the nineteenth century is that o f Chaurand (1969). Valuable remarks and references on the expansion of the language in France appear in Fèbvre (1953, pp. 169-200). * Celtic survived in some words - chemin and lieu for example.

22

France's Linguistic Identity

the upper class a m o n g the Gauls, a fact reinforced w h e n the adoption of Christianity b y the Roman E m p i r e extended the use of Latin as the language of religious ritual. Gradually, a m o n g the masses, Celtic declined as vulgar Latin was extended by the presence of R o m a n soldiers and merchants. With the Frankish invasions disruption was produced and in s o m e areas such as Flemish Belgium, L u x e m b o u r g and Lorraine, romance was wholly replaced by German. In most of France, however, the GalloR o m a n aristocracy survived. Its leaders were often bilingual in German and a vulgarized Latin (now called roman or romance). M a n y German words, as had Celtic words earlier, became part of the linguistic baggage of romance.3 By the end of the tenth century, leaders in "France" appeared w h o only k n e w Latin and roman — this was true of H u g h Capet (d. AD 996), the first French king. By this time, it might be argued, French had been born. If one looks for a birthday, as good as any might be AD 813 w h e n the Council of T o u r s during the so-called "Carolingian Renaissance", declared that sermons should be translated f r o m Latin, for the purposes of mass consumption, into either G e r m a n or the "langue romane rustique". T h e first surviving text is considered to b e the Oaths of Strasbourg (AD 842) in which King Louis of the East Franks pledged to Charles the Bald of the West Franks, in lingua romana (as Charles pledged to h i m in lingua tedesca) support against their brother, the E m p e r o r Lothair. But, of course, "French" b y AD 1000 simply meant the s u m of the various dialects derived from Latin spoken by the peoples of today's France. It needed yet eight centuries for a c o m m o n standardized " F r e n c h " to be accepted as a c o m m o n f o r m of communication a m o n g the masses or even the educated peoples of the hexagon. In the M i d d l e Ages, the language of the great university of Paris was, of course, Latin, not any romance dialect, and the language of the C h u r c h was medieval Latin. But as the prestige of the monarchy, as well as its real authority, increased, it was the dialect of Paris that gradually gained an ascendancy over the other dialects of France. By the twelfth century, as is well k n o w n , there were two large French language families, that of the N o r t h k n o w n as th elangue d'oil (oui), and of the South, the langue d'oc (each derived f r o m the manner in which y es was said). T h e latter family included provençal, the m e d i u m in the twelfth century of the culturally richer part of France - this was the age of troubadour literature, and of William IX of 3

W o r d s like querre, riche,fauteuil, bleu w e r e of G e r m a n i c origin. Brittany w e n t its o w n way, adopting t h e language of migrants f r o m Britain. A m o n g the relatively f e w Celtic w o r d s to survive w e r e chêne, alouette, and cheval.

France's Linguistic

Identity

23

Aquitaine. But the future was to lie, through political predominance, with the langue d'oil, in which a literature had already begun to appear in the twelfth century, a literature which included among its body of works The Song of Roland, translations of the lives of saints from Latin, and the chansons de geste inspired in part by the Crusades. By the end of the twelfth century Parisian French began to be used in explications de texte at the University, and by members of the growing merchant bourgeois class. By the fourteenth century Francien, the Parisian dialect (known for its "souplesse") was used widely by bureaucrats, lawyers, merchants, members of the royal court, and as the language of charters and acts of sale. It had won out in influence over its chief northern rival, Picard. Many of the great romans were written in it (Aucassin et Nicolette, for example) and it was in this language that Geoffrey de Villehardouin wrote his chronicles. In spite of the fact that it was still a fluid and ever-changing language, the Parisian dialect - bearing a greater resemblance to modern French than to Latin only by the fourteenth century — became the only literary language in the North (Froissart was the last major writer not to use it). By the middle of the fifteenth century, French had become an "evolved" language: flexional endings had disappeared to be replaced by the use of prepositions, and nouns were placed in accordance with their relation to the verb; habere was now used with the passive participle to express the perfect tense; esse and the past participle were used for all passives; and the definite and indefinite articles had been derived f r o m ille and unus. But it is important to note that no dictionaries or grammars existed to help "fix" the language and no writer appeared whose style could be taken as a standard model. The kings, the makers of France, and later, in a sense, of French, had to this date no linguistic policy. After the beginning of the disruptive and exhausting Hundred Years War, the French monarchy did not really establish itself as a strong power again until the time of Francis I (1515-1547), and only temporarily because France was soon to experience the anarchy of the religious wars which was not finally ended until 1598-1605 under Henry IV. During this period cultural superiority lay with, first, Italy and then Spain. Witness to this are the many words which entered French from these two languages, an intrusion that was not really halted until the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, during the sixteenth century the first French grammars appeared (Jehan Palsgrave, Ramus) and Robert Estienne published the first French-Latin dictionary (1549). In 1549 also, the first important boast of the quality of French was published, Joachim du Bellay's La Défense et

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illustration de la langue française. Bellay's Défense w a s the m a n i f e s t o o f the

Pléiade written against those w h o defended Latin as the standard language of culture, and in favor of the improvement of the French language by borrowing and adapting words f r o m Latin, Greek, old provincial dialects, and the technical language of technicians and artisans. Similar in intent was R o n s a r d ' s La Franciade

(1572) a n d his Abrégé de l'art poétique

français

(1585) in which he advocated the formation of diminutives and the derivation of verbs f r o m nouns (payser from pays, for example) in order to enrich the language. And in 1579 Henri Estienne, at the request of Henry III, published another declaration as to the superiority of French (Essai sur la precellence de la langage françois).

O n an administrative level, in the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539), Francis I decreed that henceforth all legal documents were to be printed in French, a decision extended to all of France by the Ordinance of Lyon in 1540. The purpose of this decision was to make the legal life of ordinary subjects easier - it reflected no chauvinistic attitude; but of course it made an enormous contribution to the diffusion of French and the linguistic unification of France. Henry IV (d. 1610) at the turn of the century was to consider it reasonable to claim all French speakers as his subjects: "As you speak the French language by nature, it is reasonable that you should be the subject of the King of France. I quite agree that the Spanish language should belong to the Spaniard and the German to the German. But the whole region of the French language must be mine." (Nathieu, Histoire de Henri IV, 1631 - quoted in Fishman 1972b, p. 1.) T h e France Henry IV spoke of had not been an inevitability, of course, but the result of hard w o r k and of the good fortune of a monarchy and its supporters - of the victories of a particular part of France over the rest of the hexagon, and of the imposition by a state of a c o m m o n order through which partly, but never fully, a c o m m o n nationality was forged (see J. Strayer in Deutsch and Foltz eds. 1963, pp. 17-26). With the restoration of order in France by 1605, after the wars of religion, and until the time of Louis XIV, the influential centers of culture, and of language standards, were the small private academies of learned men and the salons of women like Madame de Rambouillet. The royal court was in a state of relative eclipse in this respect. Increasingly, the test of whether one could be considered among the "honnêtes gens" (men of civil and sensible demeanor) came to depend in part o n the quality of one's language, and t w o m e n of major importance appeared f r o m a m o n g the savants of Paris to determine what good language was and, in the process,

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to help "fix" French - François de Malherbe (d. 1628) and Claude Favre de Vaugelas (d. 1650). Critic of poets, authority on points of grammar, defender of the language against archaisms, diminutives and new locutions, Malherbe, in lectures at his home, defended the values of "clarté", "précision" and "pureté". His ambition, as he put it, was to "degasconner la langue". He was to be honored by Boileau in L'Art poétique for taming the Muse "aux règles du devoir" and for eliminating what was "rude à l'oreille épurée". During his own time, while he was denounced often as a pedant, Malherbe enjoyed the protection of Marie de Médicis and then of Louis XIII. He is traditionally considered to be the first representative of French "classicisme". Even more influential, and one of the first and most important members of the French Academy (as director of the Dictionary), Vaugelas had enough authority to inspire Corneille and Racine to correct themselves according to his dictates. In his Les Remarques sur la languefrançaise (1647), the most important work on linguistics up to this time, he insisted that French free itself completely from Latin to become its own master, and that correct French was that of "Bon Usage", that is, the French of the best writers and of the Court where he believed French was best spoken by women because it was they who spoke more naturally. He warned those who wished to speak correctly not to spend long periods away from Paris lest their language become corrupted. There was only one correct French language for him, and it was characterized by the same qualities Malherbe saw in it with the addition of "netteté" (the quality of expression that makes for immediate understanding of the thought expressed). He was opposed to neologisms, even to those emanating from the king himself,4 and he insisted that each word be clearly defined and used only as defined. A third writer of crucial importance in helping establish the values of the French language was René Descartes (d. 1650), who both in his style and in his very philosophy manifested and preached "clarity". Also noteworthy was Blaise Pascal (d. 1662) whose elegant style became a model. The French Academy, formed out of a literary society that met at the house of Valentin Conraint, first met in 1634. It was established officially 4

U n d e r the prestige-conscious Louis X I V this w o u l d have been rather delicate. Legend has it that Louis X I V w a s able to change the gender of carrosse for all time b y calling once for " m o n carrosse".

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in 1637 w h e n registered with the Parlement, under the influence and at the request of Cardinal Richelieu. It became the most important center for the purification and the perpetuation of pure French, as well as an important j u d g e of literary quality. Article 26 of its charter assigned to it the task of publishing a dictionary, a grammar, a rhetoric and a poetic. Vaugelas, as indicated, was the most influential single member of what was to become this body of "forty immortals", and his ideas were to constitute the guidelines of its linguistic policy. A m o n g leading intellectuals to hail the Academy was Bishop Bossuet w h o u p o n his reception into its body in 1671 argued that eloquence and grace die if one did not "fix languages s o m e h o w and render them d u r a b l e . . . " Later Fénélon was to declare that with the publication of the Dictionary, French had been rendered superior to the languages of the "Anciens". T h e importance of the Academy was even recognized across the channel in England. Thus, in 1664, John D r y d e n could write: " . . . I am sorry that (speaking so noble a language as w e do) we have not a more certain measure of it, as they have in France, where they have an Academy erected for that purpose, and endowed with large privileges by the present king . . . " 5 But f r o m the first the Academy was subject to satire and attack, a French tradition to this day. Typical has been Arsène Houssaye's Histoire du quarante-et-unième fauteuil (1855) whose theme was the chair Molière never occupied. In England Samuel Johnson declared that the whole enterprise was vain because "sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal r e s t r a i n t s . . . " (Fishman 1972b, p. 73). In any case, one might well date the beginning of the standardization of French f r o m the establishment of the Academy. It was, however, to be during the reign of Louis XIV (1643—1715) that French was "fixed" and so remained, in principle, until the whole idea of standardization was to be attacked by Victor H u g o in the nineteenth century. It was under the aegis of the roi soleil that France blossomed with the talents of Pascal, Molière, Racine, Bossuet, Mme. de Sevigné, Boileau, to mention only some of the "masters" whose works became the models of good style and of "correct" French. It was to these models that Père D o m i n i q u e Bouhours (1702) in his influential Entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugène (c. 1671) pointed as the basis for the correct use of French, a language which, he claimed, combined the majesty of Latin and the "douceur" of 5

In the prefix The Rival Ladies (1664) entitled " T o Roger, Earl of Orrey", in George Watson ed., Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays (New York 1962, 2 vols., I, p. 5).

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Identity

Greek, and which was characterized by the qualities of clarté, brièveté, pureté, politesse

a n d naïveté

[simplicity].6

By 1700 writers had grammars and dictionaries to consult (which Corneille had not). P. Richelet's dictionary appeared in 1680; Antoine Furetière's in 1690; the dictionary of the Academy in 1694, and the first grammar, of Lancelot and d'Arnauld, Grammaire générale et raisonnée,

appeared in 1660 to be followed by many others. In 1690 Thomas Corneille produced the first dictionary of technical and scientific terms - a vocabulary which the Academy had chosen to ignore - the Dictionnaire des arts et des sciences. But the most serious contribution to the standardization of technical French (what might be called the "modernization" of the language) had to wait until the eighteenth century when Lavoisier, Guyton de Morveau and others helped to establish, inter alia, the manner in which suffixes and prefixes should be used to coin new terms, and the fact that simple chemical terms (with a few exceptions) were all to be masculine. The myth of French as a perfected and "fixed" language for all time, had been, nevertheless, largely accepted by the end of the seventeenth century. The authors of the grammar of the Academy of 1705 stated as much in the introduction in which they advised readers to use only "acceptable" words, and to write simply (avoiding parenthetical remarks, for example) so that the reader would have to read a sentence only once to understand it fully. In the fifth edition of the Academy's dictionary (1798) the author of the Discours préliminaire went so far as to boast that this edition would serve all people for all time. French during the time of Louis XIV may have been standardized, but France was certainly not yet unified linguistically - an estimate is that, at this time, of France's some twenty millions, only two millions were literate, only 200,000 participated in the cultural life of France, and many of these preferred Spanish, Italian or Occitan as their medium of discourse (Fishman 1972b, p. 78). Nevertheless, mythically at least, the "classical model" had been set. The writers of the "generation of 1660" had embodied in classics the values of clarity, rationality, discipline, sociability (see Brody ed. 1966). While not denying truth tô the myth, or disputing its crucial role in French cultural life, Jules Brody and others he anthologizes see it as superficial and 6

He described German as "rude and gross", Italian as the language of "frivolity", and Spanish as "agitated". Also deserving credit for developing French grammar were Vincent Voiture, and Jean Louis Guez de Balzac.

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reductionist. Racine, for example, it is argued, was as m u c h a m a n of passion and imagination as were the later Romantics - the conquest of passion and imagination in artistic f o r m should not be reduced to a matter of intelligence and f o r m , as some students of "classicism" are w o n t to. A n d r é Gide, in any case, has argued that France is unique in having fully realized her identity in the classical ideal, an ideal according to which "intelligence tends always to predominate over sentiment and instinct" (Incidences, Paris 1924), and Taine was to attack this ideal of "raison raisonnante", for eliminating reality of all of its complexity, as a baneful French heritage. T h e m y t h of the perfection of the "precious dialect", and the conviction that to change French in terms of structure or vocabulary could only lead to its " c o r r u p t i o n " , remained the c o m m o n conviction a m o n g most grammarians, even with the plethora of new w o r d s and terms introduced b y the Revolution, until the time of the Restoration. 7 Napoleon, a r o m a n tic perhaps by nature, was a classicist in policy; under h i m the state itself issued an approved grammar and the Second Class of the Institut (the n e w f o r m of the Academy which had been abolished in 1793 to be restarted under this n e w name in 1803) had as its assignment " t o bring order into the French language". Grammarians like U r b a i n Doiimergue, founder of a linguistic Athénée to refine and preserve French, preached the traditional themes and argued that the basis of language was logic - herein lay the permanence arid supremacy of French — rather than usage. 8 T h e first expressions of the romantic m o v e m e n t , hostile in principle to the rules and regulations of classicism in the sphere of language as well as in other spheres, had already, however, appeared. Rousseau and Diderot had argued that language should express "sensibilité" even if this meant breaking the rules; Chateaubriand, although a classicist at heart, produced a n e w style which aimed for the dramatic, for "couleur" and Lamartine advocated "soyez poétique" regardless of the rules. Between 1810 and 1814 M m e . de Staël published her D e l'Allemagne which became something of a bible to the French Romantics. As well as attacking French "frivolity" and "superficiality" in m a n y areas, she praised the Germans and the English for having a less rigid language than French, f o r allowing for the use of a larger vocabulary through which feelings and the imagination could find 7 A m o n g the m a n y n e w terms introduced b y the R e v o l u t i o n were: juge de paix, organiser (in the m o d e r n sense) and révolutionnaire. 8 D o u m e r g u e argued, for example, that one could not say, "Il y avait de cinq à sixfemmes dans cette réunion" because this implied there could be a fraction of a w o m a n .

France's Linguistic

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expression, however much "clarté" might be sacrificed. In France, she suggested, the classical spirit provided for order, but it excluded the realm of the imagination, of emotions, of the "infinite", and so had produced no poets equal to either a Shakespeare or a Goethe. The French, in other words, were prosaic, the northern peoples poetic. And this j u d g m e n t would indeed seem to be borne out by the fact that while the prose of eighteenth-century France was of the highest order, its poetic output was relatively feeble, a victim in part to the Procrustean bed of the classicist grammarians. It was not, however, until 1827 when H u g o ' s Préface de Cromwell was published that the Romantic revolution, as regards language, was launched in earnest. The writer must follow his "genius" and reject the arid rules of grammarians, H u g o wrote. T h e notion that French was " f i x e d " was nonsense: " U n e langue ne se fixe pas. L'esprit humain est toujours en m a r c h e . . . " - and the times demanded a new poetic language. Symbolic of the battle that followed was the noisy and obstreperous reception of H u g o ' s play Hernani in 1830. But with the alliance of Musset, Gautier and others, H u g o ' s point of view finally prevailed. By 1850 leading Romantics were sitting in the Academy; France had rediscovered the world of poetry and the stranglehold of the Alexandrian line was broken; words once proscribed were n o w used in poems; and in the time of Balzac a writer was free to have his characters speak in different dialects including argot. A revolution in grammar itself was inaugurated when C. Ayer in 1851 published his Grammaire française which was based upon general usage rather than logique, which treated words in their historical perspective, and which, while rejecting "fautes", admitted "éscarts" of individual originality. What followed, as Charles Bruneau describes it, was a period of " c o n f u sion" lasting to this day, with the Symbolistes and then the Surréalistes and others introducing all sorts of new fancies, unusual juxtapositions and uses of ordinary words. T o give a few examples: Verlaine used collective nouns in the plural (e.g. des argents); Maurice Rollinat used de before a noun to increase the number of possible adjectives indefinitely (thus, for example, à pas de caoutchouc, ses ailes de silence), and Paul Adam did not hesitate to place adverbs in front of sentences (e.g. isolément des hussards galopèrent) and even to use sentences with no verbs. French became "unfixed" and was opened to many new possibilities. But the classicist tradition, of course, persisted. The values of the eighteenth century so forcefully defended by Rivarol remained a part of

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France's heritage, and there were always leading French intellectuals to defend the French of Pascal, Racine and Voltaire, among them André Gide who defended "modesty" against the stylistic abuses of the latter-day Romantics, as well as elegant stylists like Charles Maurras, Léon Blum and Charles de Gaulle. There were certainly many Frenchmen who would agree with Bruneau's appeal at the end of his Pei lie histoire that the victory of "usage" over logic and authority, which led to so much "confusion", must never be allowed to prejudice the essential qualities of French clarté, netteté and précision.

While "French", that is, the dialect of Paris, spread its domain over provincial dialects as the French monarchs increased the sway of Paris over the rest of France, it was not until 1793-1794 that a conscious decision was taken to legislate the teaching of French throughout the hexagon. This was decided by the National Convention which went so far as to abolish, along with the various patois, the teaching of Latin (a decision later reversed by Napoleon). At the time of the Revolution, perhaps as many as half of the citizens of the Midi did not understand French, as was admitted in the Abbé Grégoire's Rapport sur la nécessité et les moyens d'anéantir le patois et d'universaliser l'usage de la langue française (June 6, 1794). This was the

report that set the principle of promoting French domestically and in identifying patriotism with the speaking of French. This approach to linguistic unification would help unify France and serve to undermine the influence of "clericalism" which made use of local idioms to attack the Revolution. In a similar vein, Bertrand Barrère, in his Sur les idiomes étrangers et l'ensignement de la langue française (January 27, 1794) had said:

"Federalism and superstition speak Breton; emigration and hatred of the Republic speak German; the counterrevolution speaks Italian, and fanaticism speaks Basque" (Kohn 1967, p. 91).9 But administratively, France was not yet equipped (with enough teachers, for example) to fulfill this "frenchification" of France, even if the principle had been established that French was to become the primary language of all the French people. The increasing demand by members of the middle class, however, to learn "proper" French began to be satisfied around 1800 when popular dictionaries and manuals on correct usage began to appear, among them Pierre-Claude Boiste's Dictionnaire universel, the manuals of D'Hautel, the * Kohn tends to play down the French impulse to impose their language on others, at least in normal times. This helps to support his theme contrasting French liberal and German integral nationalism. For a less friendly view see Lafont (1968).

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first histories of the French language of Petitot and Gabriel Henry. And the extension of primary education, made obligatory by the laws of 1881-1884, contributed greatly to the victory of French over all other dialects. From the point of view of some Frenchmen the extension of the French language throughout the hexagon, outlined above, was a case of "cultural imperialism" and even "genocide". 1 0 T o such linguistic regionalists the laws of Jules Ferry were the "final seal", and they consider it no coincidence that Ferry was also father of France's " n e w imperialism" — Catalans, Occitans, Bretons and Basques, Italians (in Corsica), Germans (in Alsace) had been submitted to the same ruthless "assimilation" and cultural deracination as the Vietnamese and Tunisians were later to be. T o LouisJean Calvet, Ferry's educational laws served as a "rouleau compresseur", along with obligatory military service, in the triumph of French cultural imperialism (Temps Modernes, 1973, pp. 72-9, "Le Colonialisme linguistique en France"). Earlier stages had included the Albigensian Crusade, the seizure of Bordeaux in 1453 (ending the Hundred Years War), the forced marriage of Anne of Brittany to Charles VIII and later to Louis XII, and the annexation of Brittany in 1532. According to Robert Lafont, " T h e historical realization of France is, in effect, a long and methodical destruction of national entities of other races within the territorial hexagon" (ibid., pp. 21-3, 29, "Sur le Probeme national en France: aperçu historique"). Yves Person, a distinguished scholar and a Breton militant, held the executors of francophonia to be the most ruthless cultural imperialists in history (ibid., pp. 90-118, "Impérialisme linguistique et colonialisme"). 10 A b o o k about to be published is Daniel Defontaines' La Révolution française et la langue. It should be noted that even c o n t e m p o r a n e o u s l y the t r i u m p h of French had not been absolute t h r o u g h o u t the hexagon. B u r n e y cited the case of a m o t h e r in P o r t - N a v a l e (Brittany) being asked to interpret b e t w e e n a g r a n d m o t h e r and a daughter-in-law. A n d in the Bas-Rhin, the percentage of French speakers d u r i n g the years 1931-56 w a s only 78 percent - 81 percent in the H a u t - R h i n , 90 percent in the Moselle (Burney 1962, pp. 24-5). With the mass e x o d u s of colons f r o m Algeria in 1962, a n e w dialect was introduced into the métropole, a rich concoction laced with terms and constructions f r o m various Mediterranean l a n g u a g e s - s e e Lanly (1971). T h e most useful compact source in w h i c h linguistic regionalists gave vent t o their opinions was Temps Modernes (1973), w h i c h was almost exclusively devoted to the p r o b l e m . It included discussions of the various militant m o v e m e n t s that defended Catalan, Basque, Occitan and B r e t o n aspirations, and provided extensive bibliographies for each. T h e m o s t i m p o r t a n t as well as prolific o n the w h o l e question was doubtlessly R o b e r t Lafont. U s e f u l discussions of the issue appear frequently in Le Monde — see especially H e n r i D e l i g n y ' s discussion "Régionalistes ou français en m a r g e ? " in the issues f r o m 3 - 7 A u g u s t 1971. Also very useful is Langue Française (1975), a special issue o n the subject.

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This was so, he suggested, out of a need to compensate for the "tare de leur origine de colonisés", and for having submitted to and for having then assumed the levelling tradition of the Roman Empire. Another possible explanation that he proposed was that the French, being a mixture of the Mediterranean Latin and the northern Germanic, had an identity problem which they sought to solve through the Procrustean pretension of "universality". T o combat this pernicious myth of "universality", Person argued, one had to destroy its mythical allies: "Gaul and its natural frontiers, the unity of pre-existant France, uncreated like the Koran and laboriously re-established (not conquered), by the Capetians, finally the progressive mastery of space by a good central power (the absolute monarchy) at the expense of evil 'feudal' provincials." T o Person, indicative of France's militant preoccupation with language was the fact that only in French is the same word (faute) used for both a moral fault and for an orthographic error; and indicative of France's arrogance toward the various "dialects" it conquered were the multiplicity of pejorative terms to refer to the usage of these dialects — "charabia" (originally for Occitan) for example, and, for Breton, "baragouin" from bara ha gwin - bread and wine. "French culture", he concluded, "in contrast to English can be characterized as the culture of contempt (mépris), the refusal of the Other" (ibid., pp. 119-27, "Girondins et Jacobins: l'idéologie de l'unité"). The French obsession with her language, one might suggest, could also be explained by the fact that, unlike England, and unlike Germany and Italy which at thé time of their unifications had widely accepted languages of culture (through Dante's influence, and the influences of Luther's Bible and the works of Goethe), for France language was so integral a part of the process of making of the regnum, and then of the nation. As Tocqueville argued in his several works, the nation that emerged from the Revolution was, as far as centralization, coordination, and unification were concerned, not the antithesis of the work of the Capetians and Valois, but its completion. Robert Lafont made this same point in his criticism of the Jacobins for fulfilling the same historical mission of the very monarchs they denounced (1968, pp. 195—6). From the point of view of the makers of France, whether of the Old Regime or of the Revolution, efforts to preserve "dialects" such as Alsatian, Corsican or Breton represented not only uncultured rejections of the language of the Racines, but also insults and even threats to the unity and prestige of the kingdom, and then of the nation. This explains the irony of Frenchmen denouncing Russians for suppressing Polish and other

France's Linguistic

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33

languages, or, closer to home, Germans for suppressing French in Alsace, while seeking to abolish the various "patois" within her own borders. And it was not strange that many Frenchmen, heirs of the language of the universally admired literature of the seventeenth century and authors of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, addressed, unlike the English in the Bill of Rights, to mankind as such, should assume, or at least give the impression by their behavior of assuming, that their culture was not only universal, but the only truly universal culture. It was against this assumption, to an extent, that German Romantic nationalism rebelled, as were to later movements like Négritude, créolisme, and Arabism. Even in recent times French linguistic patriots could find encouragement for their belief in the universality of French from foreign leaders such as Léopold Senghor who once urged, in Egypt in 1966, thaf French be adopted as the "privileged language" of the Third World not only because it was the l a n g u a g e of The Discourse on Method, t h e Declaration of the Rights of Man a n d

of the Civil Code, but because even Négritude had adopted it as the language of revolt! (Boly 1971, pp. 35-56). This address by Senghor was cited by Boly, a Walloon patriot who, echoing both the valid and the suspect in Rivarol's famous essay, explained that French was the "human language", the medium of, inter alia, Descartes' "method", Pascal's "intuition", and Teilard de Chardin's "humanism". French, he stated, was characterized by a tendency to abstraction, to reducing matters to their essentials, with five tenses to provide precision. Other qualities Boly boasted for French were the exact pronunciation of vowels and consonants all uttered clearly from the end of the lips, its "sonorité moyenne" providing elegance without exaggeration, a codified and abstract vocabulary by which one word, like aller, for example, could serve for reiten, fahren, gehen in German. The ordering of French, he maintained was "direct and progressive" (ibid., pp. 9-14). Whatever the merits of French might be, the tendency of some Frenchmen to identify the French language with French exclusively and to see it as the embodiment of an eternal "genius" was controvertible. The French nationality, as we have seen, was a creation over time and through deliberate effort to render uniform what was linguistically heterogeneous. The French language itself was originally only one more "dialect" (of Latin), one standardized largely through the agency of the state. French clearly was never the "natural" language of a single people embodying its "genius". Nor could the French language be identified exclusively with France or the French people. It was also the language of many Canadians,

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Identity

Belgians, Swiss and of peoples in Africa who rejected French tutelage. In each of these various cases, French was used by peoples whose national identities were not French. Denis de Rougemont, in a work on Switzerland, sharply criticized any pretension the French might have that peoples outside her borders w h o spoke French necessarily "belonged" to France (1965, pp. 186-91). He argued that the Roman sense of nationality was quite distinctly Swiss, and that in any case the French pretension falsely assumed that Europe was a collection of distinct cultures rather than a series of variations on common themes. Beyond the hexagon, the extension of the French language was a function of political circumstances, particularly of the relative international prestige of French princes or of the French monarchy at any one time. Events such as the conquests of Sicily in 1043 and of England in 1066 by the Normans, as also of the Crusaders when the phrase "Gesta Dei per Francos" was first heard, established French as an important international language, as did the great prestige of the University of Paris, and the famous Champagne fairs. By the thirteenth century French was the language of the ruling aristocracies of England and, for a period, of Constantinople, Thessalonica, the Morea, Athens and Thebes, although in all these cases the hold of French was to prove ephemeral. 11 While Latin remained predominant as the language of education and the Church, French itself was already considered "delectable" at the close of the Middle Ages; Dante considered French for the Divine Comedy, and it was in French that Marco Polo dictated his memoirs. With the fourteenth century, however, and until the seventeenth, during the bitter years of travail which covered the Hundred Years War, and later, the wars of religion, the prestige of French paled before Italian and Spanish. It was only, as seen, after Henry IV re-established stability in France, and then during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), that France was to emerge as the predominant continental power (over the Habsburgs of Spain in particular). And it was with the emergence of a great French literature and the standardization of French already discussed, that French was to become the "universal" language of the Christian West. By 1700 France, with about one sixth of the population of Western Europe (20 millions) and possessing the most effective military force on the continent, had become a "super-power". Its chief rival on the conti11 English became the official language of Parliament only after 1362. By 1450 the common language of legal documents was English rather than French or Latin. On the impact of French upon English in history see René de Chantal in Chantal et al. (1969, pp. 1-25).

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35

nent, Spain, was in a state of relative decline, a fact confirmed by France's decisive victory at the Battle of Rocroi in 1643. In the sphere of culture, France had already produced a very great literature and Versailles had been turned into a show-place that evoked the envy and often the emulation of princes everywhere. There was, of course, England, and it was she w h o was to play a crucial role in destroying whatever dreams Louis XIV may have had of universal empire. But because of the Channel, England seemed remote; her power lay overseas and not on the continent of Europe proper. Culturally and linguistically, educated and aristocratic Europe revolved around Paris and Versailles — "Paris is the café of Europe", said the Abbé Galiani - and the works of England's geniuses, Locke and N e w t o n , were to be discovered by Europe largely through the medium of French, in translation or in explication. In the coming century of "Reason" and "Enlightenment" it was writers in French, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau and many others, w h o were to sap the moral bases of the old regimes and prepare the way for the Age of Democracy in Western Europe. The prestige and "universality" of French in the eighteenth century was evident in many ways. With the Treaty of Rastadt (1714) and to at least the time of the Treaty of Versailles, French was the language of European diplomacy. 1 2 With the Treaty of Hubertusburg (February 15, 1763) the Latin text of treaties ceased to have legal priority over the French. In 1700 French was adopted as the working language of the newly founded Academy of Berlin and Frederick the Great of Prussia and Casanova wrote in French. In 1756 a permanent French theater was established in St. Petersburg; French philosophes were intimates of Catherine the Great, as well as of Frederick II; three magazines in French were published in Vienna during the time of Maria Theresa; and Russian and Polish aristocrats often brought their children up speaking French as their principal language. And then with the conquests of the French Revolution and Napoleon, it seemed probable on the surface that French, in the new democratic age, might even become the language of Europe on more than only an aristocratic and educated level. As in the seventeenth century when France had been the model of what to contemporaries was modernity, so n o w with the energies released by the Revolution, France was once again the model of progressiveness. Considering the extraordinary impact of la grande nation, n o w "mid-wife of the revolution" (Jacques Godechot's term), it is not 12 Fishman (1972b, pp. 63-4) points to the absurdity of the Academy at the time referring to French as the "natural" language of diplomacy.

36

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Identity

strange that the French language, already recognized for its discipline, should have attained to its reputation as "universal".13 Ironically, however, it was the very triumph of Napoleonic France that helped arouse a cultural as well as a national political resistance to French hegemony, one that finally was to preclude definitively the possibility of French becoming the continental language of Europe. As Albert Guérard observed, "it was . . . the victories of the Revolution and the empire that killed the supremacy of French: in Tolstoy's War and Peace the hero, Pierre Bezukhov, makes a valiant effort to unlearn French and, haltingly at first, to speak Russian" (1959, p. 13).14 Thus, Guérard states, it was French imperialism that led to the decline of French "universality". The awakening of the nationalities, the rise of nationalism in the West, would surely have come sooner or later in any case and brought with it the recovery and reanimation of national languages and of history to reinforce unity and recover historical identity and confidence as preached by the Herders and Fichtes.15 Henceforth, in Europe at least, the French could only hope to have French remain the leading second language of other Europeans, the language of culture, and for a long period they were successful in this. At least until the fall of Napoleon III in 1870, 13 H a n n a h A r e n d t (1965) in On Revolution ( N e w York, V i k i n g - C o m p a s s ) provides a lucid explanation of w h y it w a s the French rather than the American Revolution that "set the w o r l d on fire", t o b e c o m e the source par excellence of m o d e r n revolutionary t h o u g h t and symbolism. Palmer (1959, 1964) is the best study of the French Revolution in t h e context of the t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of the Atlantic World f r o m " f e u d a l i s m " to " d e m o c r a c y " , and G o d e c h o t (1956) of the spread of French Revolution militarily, administratively and ideologically. O n the spread of the French language p r o p e r see Godechot, pp. 53-6, 635-7. 14 Indicatively, Fichte, perhaps G e r m a n y ' s leading patriotic philosopher, emphasized language as the crucial d i m e n s i o n of nationalism, and the youth of the Burschenschaften of the early nineteenth century sloganized: "If you let y o u r daughter learn French you m i g h t as well teach her to b e c o m e a w h o r e . " See Golo M a n n , M a r i o n Jackson, trans., The History of Germany since 1789 ( L o n d o n 1968, p. 58). 15 Peter Gay in The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, V o l u m e II: The Science of Freedom ( N e w Y o r k 1969, p. 60) indicates that in the early sixteenth century t w o books o u t of every three in France w e r e published in Latin. By the 1780's one in t w e n t y only w e r e published in Latin. T h e same general trend w a s also true of England and Germany. Gay states: "Thephilosophes completed the linguistic r e v o l u t i o n " o f replacing Latin with m o d e r n national languages by w r i t i n g their m a j o r w o r k s in their o w n language rather than in Latin. A n d this trend preceded N a p o l e o n , of course. T o y n b e e (1934-1961) asserts that for English the t u r n i n g point coincided with England's victories in the Seven Years' War and sees as symbolically i m p o r t a n t David H u m e ' s persuading G i b b o n to w r i t e The Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire in English rather than in French, even t h o u g h French w o u l d have been easier for G i b b o n w h o had received his early education in Lausanne. H u m e believed that events " p r o m i s e a superior stability and duration t o the English language". G i b b o n first conceived of his w o r k in 1764.

France's Linguistic Identity

37

after all, France was still considered to be the mightiest continental nation and Paris, reconstructed under the emperor, the most important center of continental culture. But with the unification o f Germany and the defeat o f France in the Franco-Prussian war, France's pre-eminence was shaken. Perhaps the first indication that members of the French élite now felt that the French language needed to be defended and extended abroad through conscious effort - its supremacy no longer being self-sustaining and automatic - was the establishment of the Alliance Française in 1883 and later of the Mission Laique, both discussed below. But in spite of France's reverses, the international reputation of French was still too great for serious concern, especially after the French emerged victorious from World War I still in possession o f the second greatest empire in the world. With the imperial extension of France into the colonial sphere there naturally followed the extension of the French language. Twice France was able to establish extensive empires, and twice these disintegrated — once under the onslaught o f the British in the eighteenth century, second with the emergence of the Third World to political independence after World War II. But each time, albeit in different ways, the imprint of French culture and the continuity o f the French language outlived, in many cases, the loss o f political hegemony. 16 One possible birth date of the first empire is 1533 when Francis I received Pope Alexander VI's ruling that the division of the extraEuropean world between Portugal and Spain only referred to continents already discovered. Starting with the exploration of Jacques Cartier the following year (in Newfoundland and the Saint Lawrence) France's first claims overseas were made, and between 1554 and 1562 French settlements were established in the Hudson Bay area, Labrador, and on the shores of the St. Lawrence River. In 1604 de Mons and Champlain brought Arcadia under French rule; La Salle added Louisiana, and after 1625 the French established their claims to the Antilles. In Africa, France established bastions in Algeria (the Bastion de France, La Calle) as early as 1560, and settlements along the coast of Senegal in the seventeenth century. In the Indian Ocean claims were made in the eighteenth century to the Rodrigues Islands, the lie Bourbon (later renamed La Réunion), parts of the east coast o f Madagascar, the île de France (Mauritius) and the Seychelles. In Asia, French commerical settlements (comptoirs) carved out along the 16 Useful histories of the French Empire are legion. One might consult the bibliography in Fieldhouse (1966) for the more important ones.

38

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Identity

coast of India in the seventeenth century inaugurated France's claim to an Indian empire. But this first empire was almost completely lost to France during what John Seeley has called the Second Hundred Years War (1688-1815). In 1713 the French forfeited Newfoundland, the Hudson Bay, Labrador and Arcadia following the War of Spanish Succession. In 1763 she lost what remaining claims she had to Canada and almost all of her possessions in India following the Seven Years War. And, finally, during or after the Napoleonic wars, she lost claim to the islands of the Indian Ocean, Louisiana (which was sold in 1803 to the U.S.), and Haiti in 1804 following a successful native revolt for independence. It is significant to note, however, that in almost all of the territories lost - even a part of "Louisiana" - French culture and the French language remained dimensions of society. French control, by the time of the Restoration (1815), only extended to the three provinces of coastal Senegal, the Antilles, a few outposts in India (Mahé and Pondicherry being the important ones), a part of Martinique, Guiana, and, in the Indian Ocean, Réunion. She also held the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon - splinters only of the great mercantilistic empire of the seventeenth century. But during the nineteenth century, France gradually, and then like other big powers in the heyday of the "New Imperialism" (1880-1914), feverishly, built up the second most powerful empire in the world, one which lasted to the Second World War and which, in 1930, the terminal date of the study of this chapter, seemed to be invulnerable for the indefinite future, however illusory this was to prove in retrospect. The second French empire may be considered to have started with the addition of Algeria to the few pockets of empire already existing - even if Algeria was, in 1848, proclaimed to be part of metropolitan France herself. In 1847 Tahiti entered the French orbit. Under Napoleon III, France was able to make Mexico a temporary satellite and to strengthen her ties with Egypt (which ever since Napoleon I's invasion in 1798 had become increasingly tied to France culturally and even, at times, politically). In 1869, under French sponsorship and with French technology, the Suez Canal was opened. During the Crimean War (1854-1856), Napoleon III successfully asserted France's protection of the native Catholics of the Levant and of its various religious missions in Jerusalem and elsewhere. In Asia, French officers laid the groundwork of what was to be French Indo-China through protectorates in Cochin-China (1862-1867), Cambodia (1863), and, after 1868, through the conquest of Tonkin, the latter to

France's Linguistic

Identity

39

assure control of the Red River and so promote French trade with Yunan. Following the disaster of the Franco-Prussian War (1870), France licked her wounds and sought ways to escape from the diplomatic isolation imposed upon her by Bismarck. One answer lay in strengthening herself through empire. Against the advice of Clemenceau, but with the encouragement of Jules Ferry, who believed the path to Alsace and Lorraine lay through empire, France joined, if she did not actually inaugurate, the scramble for empire during the era of the N e w Imperialism. In 1881 a protectorate was imposed upon Tunisia, and by 1912, with the establishment of the protectorate over Morocco, France's North African triptych was completed. Equatorial Africa became French in 1884; Senegal was consolidated in 1889; Mauritania and the French Sudan were taken in 1893; Dahomey in 1893; and Madagascar finally in 1896. In the Pacific, several islands including N e w Caledonia were obtained between 1854 and 1887, and all of French Indo-China was consolidated in 1892. O n the eve of World War I, France had thus become a great world empire, second only to Britain. Emerging victorious from World War I, France was not only able to maintain what she already possessed, but even to extend her sway, in the form of mandates, over Syria and Lebanon, Togo and the French Cameroons. By the eve of World War II, French sway extended over 12,625,104 square kilometers including a population of67,341,000 natives and 1,471,000 Europeans. These included in Melanesia: 100,000 natives, 17,000 Europeans; in Polynesia: 40,000 natives, 5,000 Europeans; in Madagascar and the Comores: 3,745,000 natives and 22,000 Europeans; in Réunion: 328,000; in Syria and Lebanon: 2,772,000; in Indo-China: 23,000,000; in Martinique: 501,000; in the three North African states: 15,529,000 natives and, significantly, 1,361,000 Europeans; in Equatorial Africa: 2,230,000 natives and 3,600 Europeans; in French West Africa: 14,550,000 natives and 25,000 Europeans; and in the mandated areas of the Cameroons and Togo, about 3,000,000. The remaining population was scattered over the five enclaves of India, Kouang Tcheou-Wan, islands in the Indian Ocean, French Somalia, Guiana, the islands of the Antilles and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (Yacono 1969). With such an empire under its sway, victorious in World War I in spite of great suffering, and with Paris still the cultural capital of much of the world - many peoples' "second fatherland" - one can understand why David Schoenbrun could write: Once upon a time, in the golden summer of 1925, France reigned supreme in the world, supreme in arms and arts and joy in living. . . France's military power was

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matched and surpassed by the brilliance o f her culture, which radiated around the world like a beacon, drawing the most creative talents for Paris from all corners of the earth. In Tokyo, Seritzawa wrote a best-seller entitled I Want to Die in Paris ...17

But as Schoenbrun also suggested, this was France's summer, the autumn and winter were soon to come. France, it has been argued, was living a "delayed action effect" produced by the victory of World War I and because much of the world was still bedazzled by France's culture and by the glamor of Paris. In fact, H. Stuart Hughes states, the Cartesian tradition in thought and culture was running out; no longer could one "assume an elegant verbal solution to a problem would suffice to settle it". France was soon to lose her illusions, her international power to seem fragile, her response to be a negative defensiveness - the Maginot Line mentality - and after 1940 she was to be cut off from some of the important international developments in science and thought for a period of five years (Hughes 1968, pp. 2-11). The year 1930 has not been picked as the terminal date for the present survey of the expansion of France arbitrarily. In retrospect, about this time, invisible to most, was the handwriting on the wall. The Great Depression and the collapse of the Weimar Republic were present in germ, and about this time also, nationalism in the Third World first emerged as a threat to France as it already was to Britain. Thus, for example, the Tunisian Destour Party had been founded; and in 1934 the militant NeoDestour, under Habib Bourguiba, broke with its moderate reformist position to struggle for full independence. In the same year the Committee for Moroccan Action was to demand the strict application of the terms of the Protectorate of 1912. An insurrection had occurred in Syria, and Damascus had been bombed (in 1925) while an obscure Vietnamese student later to be named Ho Chi Minh was studying in Paris. In Algeria a three-pronged challenge to the status quo had been institutionalized in the Association of the Reformist 'Ulema, which insisted on the recovery of Algeria's Arab-Muslim heritage, Messali Hadj's Etoile musulmane, which demanded independence, and the movement associated with Ferhat Abbas, which, although it favored assimilation to France, demanded full equality for the Muslim community. Mubarak Mili, a member of the Association of the Reformist 'Ulema, was giving voice to an impulse 17 R e v i e w of William Shirer's The Collapse of the Third Republic ( N e w York 1970) in The Saturday Review of Literature, N o v e m b e r 8,1969, pp. 31-2, 60. G e r t r u d e Stein once declaimed that in 1923, " P a r i s was w h e r e the twentieth century w a s " . Q u o t e d in R a y m o n d Sontag, A Broken World: 1919-1939 ( N e w York 1971, p. 129).

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shared by millions of France's colonial subjects when he declaimed to his people: " O h Community of Algeria! Return to your religion, to your language. Your happiness depends on your religion; and this happiness will not be possible without a perfect mastery of your language" (Merad 1967, p. 353). Voices of revolt against the pretensions of French "universality" were now being heard in the Third World, as once they had been in Europe from the mouths of figures like Fichte and Tolstoy's Pierre Bezukhov.

CHAPTER

2

Waning and Resurgence

"We had to raise from the ruins, to reanimate in the populations a confidence that the defeat and the Vichy regime had destroyed. We had to fashion, with a Syria and a Lebanon become independent and divorced morally from us, a permanent bond with France" (General Catroux in 1941).

A f t e r 1930, France's brilliant star was to p l u m m e t suddenly, its d i p l o m a c y t o b e c o m e defensive and feeble, its e c o n o m y t o be hit b y the Depression and, w i t h i n ten years, its armies to be shattered. A f t e r W o r l d War II, la grande nation w a s to discover that it could no l o n g e r claim to b e a m a j o r w o r l d p o w e r . In the sphere of culture, w h e r e it held its o w n better than elsewhere, it w a s to find that t h e language of t h e m o d e r n w o r l d of science and t e c h n o l o g y was becoming, increasingly, the l a n g u a g e of o n e o f the t w o n e w s u p e r - p o w e r s , and that even w i t h i n the hexagon, the French language was being invaded b y a n e w vocabulary that was heavily of A m e r i c a n provenance. Symbolically, France was to experience the t r a u m a of h a v i n g French accepted as an official w o r k i n g language of t h e U n i t e d N a t i o n s b y o n l y one vote, and in eastern E u r o p e w h e r e French had been the m a j o r second language of the élite, it was to find that t h e second s u p e r - p o w e r o f the w o r l d was to replace French w i t h Russian. As for her great empire, w i t h the disruption caused b y W o r l d W a r II and the rise of the nationalisms of the T h i r d World, France w a s to b e forced to "retreat into the h e x a g o n " , and abandon its p r e - e m i n e n t role in the w o r l d arena. E f f o r t s t o save w h a t could be saved t h r o u g h t h e establishments of the ephemeral French U n i o n and t h e n the even m o r e ephemeral French C o m m u n i t y w e r e t o p r o v e abortive. B e t w e e n 1943 a n d 1946 L e b a n o n and Syria b e c a m e fully independent; by 1954 France had lost I n d o - C h i n a , and

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by 1956 both Tunisia and Morocco were independent; in 1954 the tragedy o f the Algerian ordeal began, and in 1962 France lost even this part o f "metropolitan France". By 1960 the Community was dead and the African states o f the old French West and Equatorial Africa were fully sovereign. The reduced France outremer now only included the overseas departments o f Martinique, Guadeloupe (and dependencies), Guiana, Reunion, a small overseas territory in Somalia (Afars and Issas), and islands scattered over the world (the Comores, New Caledonia and Loyalty Islands, the New Hebrides, Wallis and Futuna, French Polynesia, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon). All o f these territories combined constituted only 762,849 square kilometers in area, of the once 12 million square kilometers, with a population of only 1,581,000 o f the once 64 millions. France had ceased to be an imperial power. As Pierre-Henri Simon and others observed, one French reaction to the defeat o f 1940, the instability of government during the Fourth Republic, the rise of the super-powers with their atomic capability and the shrinkage o f empire, was to conclude that France had become "decadent", that her day as a world leader was gone forever. One among many expressions o f this mood was that o f Dutourd (1957) who, in despair, attacked his people for taking "memories for rights" (as Rivarol had said o f the aristocracy o f 1789); for the "snivelling humanitarianism" o f the bankrupt left; and for repudiating General de Gaulle shortly after the end o f the war - " . . . I believe that French honor has followed General de Gaulle into retirement", he said. France had now become one "gigantic Madame Bovary"; she had abandoned her empire out o f weakness, not generosity, and now she was ". . . being spat at by the gutter-snipes o f Cairo . . . " In short, Dutourd said: "France is full of p e o p l e . . . who complain in all good faith about decadence but who practice the indulgent and utilitarian morality o f countries which have ceased to believe in their national destiny". 1 Similar was the criticism of a sympathetic foreign observer, H. Stuart Hughes. He described the French in the fifties as provincial, its leading thinkers out o f touch with important new intellectual currents, living, ostrich-like, a Romantic myth o f Revolution, obsessed by resentment o f the United States, naive about Russia, in a "self-contained compartment" (1968, pp. 164-7). Among the anxieties expressed during these years time and again in Simon, in Esprit 1962, cited a leading French literary figure as saying after the Evian peace treaty with Algeria was signed (1962): "Maintenant, il nous reste a mourir." 1

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articles and books, and in personal contacts with Frenchmen, was not only that France milst develop industrially and technologically in order to be seen as more than the nation of "wines and perfumes", but that she must defend herself against the invasion of "Coca-Cola imperialism" and even defend her o w n language from the threat of "linguistic imperialism" as represented b y America. The French language itself was n o w in a state of crisis. What is intended by the term crisis in the present context is not necessarily, or in every respect, a reality, one corresponding to the objective state and stature of French, but a term applicable to a state of alarm felt by many Frenchmen concerned with the state of this language in t w o i m p o r tant respects: its corruption f r o m within because of a permissive attitude toward the intrusion of American words and even structures, and, second, the decline of French as an international language as a result of France's political shrinkage and loss of prestige. T h e most famous protest against the internal corruption of French was doubtlessly René Etiemble's ironic jeremiad Parlez-vous franglais? (1964). 2 Etiemble, a professor of comparative literature at the Sorbonne, was as hostile to the United States as the Henry Miller of The Air-Conditioned Nightmare to which he frequently referred. Parlez-vous franglais? was a miscellany of sarcasms, short tales told ironically infranglais, brief, though repetitive, essays on the grammatical peculiarities and vocabulary offranglais, and frequent apostrophes to his people to say, "non, non et non!" to the "sabir atlantic" which hé mockingly called ". . . langue jeune, langue nouvelle vague, langue new look". 3 Perhaps the weakest parts of the book were its assumption that the American linguistic intrusion was a result of some sort of an "anglosaxon" plot rather than a result of the relative superiority in technology and science of American society; and its almost hysterical anti-American prejudices: ". . . we must speak English, or better, American, in order to think like the Yankees, and to let ourselves evaporate without protest into the American way of life, the best in the world [in English]. And what if I, myself, should have a horror of sacred cows munching chewing-gum, and even chóuine gomme, and even la gomme à mâcher? And what if I, myself,

2 A m o n g his m o r e fervent allies were Alain Guillermou, discussed below, R o b e r t Bidois (of Le Monde), and Le canard enchaîné. 3 N o t e that the spelling of atlantique was a deliberate spoof of o n e of the affectations of speakers o f f r a n g l a i s .

Waning and

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Resurgence

have a horror of the Ku Klux Klan and of 'segregation'?" (p. 122).4 But this sort of hysteria aside, Etiemble did have both amusing and penetrating things to say aboutfranglais. Among the thousands of words invading French speech he cited were windshield, snack, striptease, carton (of cigarettes), pipe-line, tennismen (a French corruption), yachting,5 Among phrases he cited were "moi pour un" (I for one), "puissance atomique majeure", "le drive sexuel". Areas of greatest infection were sports, the world of beauty parlors (magazines like Elle), toy stores and dancing. More serious than the corruption of vocabulary, however, was that of grammar. User of franglais, and even Le Monde on occasion was guilty, liked to spell with the letters k and y (not used in French) - thus, for example Picardy, Norky apples, Krystian (as a name); attempts were made to pronounce words in the English style, for example tènnis, call-girl-, it was fashionable to be quite inconsistent in the form of the plural, for example "deux hold-up", or des whisky (or whiskies, or whiskys); combination words were made with the use of rama, ex, or the prefixes super, auto, self, for e x a m p l e sanitex,

striperama,

super-show

à l'américaine,

auto-hall,

self-

service; syllables were cut and combined to form monstrosities like "horstel" (a hotel for horses); adjectives were placed in front of nouns (atypical for French), for example "une urgente message"; adjectives were used for adverbs, for example, "habillez-vous pratique". The impact of America, 4

Genêt (1965) in a discussion of the b o o k observed pertinently of franglais, ". . . w e Anglo-Saxons d o n ' t export it; it is the French w h o i m p o r t it" (pp. 575-6). T h e invasion of American w a s n o t unique to France, of course. Time ( N o v e m b e r 23, 1970, p. 40) referring to a dictionary of English intrusions m a d e into G e r m a n , prepared b y Fritz and Ingeborg Neske, gave as examples: die Sexbombe, ein Ladykiller, ein Playboy, die Eskalation, die Croundhostess, das Bodybuilding. A n d in 1974, even the Russians were w o r r i e d about the "Infiltratsiya" of English technical terms into Russian, as well as of w o r d s like " c h e w i n g g u m " and " r o c k " (International Herald Tribune, February 21, 1974). Art B u c h w a l d (Internationa! Herald Tribune, February 3—4, 1973) satirized the concern over franglais with a m o c k address to President P o m p i d o u in English, using terms such as detente, sang-froid, au courant, déjà vu, faux-pas, ambiance, etc. A F r e n c h m a n w h o ridiculed those obsessed with "l'invasion de n o t r e l a n g u e " was Jacques Cellard in Le Monde, D e c e m b e r 29, 1971. H e saw b o r r o w i n g of n e w w o r d s as healthy (provided they w e r e assimilated structurally i n t o the language) and accused the Etiembles (by implication) of " u n p u r i s m e paralysant". Cellard's article inspired a rich correspondence, s o m e o f w h i c h is quoted in Le Monde, J a n u a r y 23-4, 1972. René de Chantal, " T h e Indebtedness of English to French", pp. 1 - 2 5 in C h a n t a l et al. (1969) observes that English h a d b o r r o w e d f r o m French w o r d s like valet, d o u b l e entendre, m o d e (during the Restoration); evolution, ideology, o p t i m i s m (during the Enlightenment); and chassis, g a r age, aeroplane, limousine (during t h e Industrial Revolution). 5

A m o n g the w o r d s that appeared in the Nouveau Petit Larousse 1971 w e r e babysitter, night-club, mesomorphe, nuisance (for w h a t produces u r b a n disorders),factoring (for transfer of c o m m e r i c a l bills), xérographie, aérotrain, bionique.

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Resurgence

Etiemble felt was greatest in the field of advertising, leading the people of mesure to indulge in desecrations like "super-total", "vraiment blanc", or "100% total". O f course Etiemble's book was amusing, but its intent was clearly serious, even grimly so, and there were many Frenchmen who shared his alarm. Thus, Jean Basdevant, the Director of Affaires Culturelles et Techniques au Ministère des Affaires Etrangères,

stated that it w a s t h e intent o f

those responsible in his ministry to do all they could to destroy the "prejudice" that had produced: "Ce fétichisme de l'anglais, considéré comme seule langue scientifique et t e c h n i q u e . . . " in so many parts of the world (Le Monde, December 4, 1963). Pierre Barberis, President of the Association Française des Professeurs de Français, w a r n e d t h a t F r e n c h w a s in

danger because of a decline in the quality of teaching it to the youth due to dangerous penny-pinching, and he warned that French was losing its " 'humanistic' content" by often being taught directly, without use of the classics (Le Monde, March 29-30, 1970).6 And Michel Legris, in two articles in Le Monde entitled "La Langue française est-elle en péril?", took off from a statement by Philippe Rossillon (the Rapporteur Général of the Haut Comité pour la Défense et l'Expansion

de la Langue Française) t h a t F r e n c h

was in danger of becoming ". . . an underdeveloped language, a language of a colonized country", to deplore the quantity of English terms used in modern technology - of a thousand words in a glossary published by French oil companies, half were English. He wondered if Africans might not some day learn English directly in preference to a language so full, in modern subjects, of English anyway (December 10-11, 1969).7 Many letters were written to Le Monde in response to these two articles by Legris. Perhaps the most alarming from the point of view of French 6

For a discussion of the "rapport R o u c h e t t e " w h i c h proposed a simplified m e t h o d of teaching French to children, as o p p o s e d to the present "élite" system, see Le Monde, D e c e m b e r 23, 1970. Violent opposition t o this proposal of course came f r o m m a n y quarters, including the French Academy. 7 Legris, in these articles, described a disruptive dispute a m o n g French officials as t o w h e t h e r to teach French abroad in its purest f o r m (favored b y the Foreign Office) or in a simplified, easily teachable f o r m (favored by the Haut Comité). In January 1972, Jacques C h a b a n - D e l m a s , the French prime minister, ordered the French administration to p u r g e itself o f " f r a n g l a i s " terms. T h i s followed publication of the results of a poll in Italy that s h o w e d that a m a j o r i t y of France's Latin n e i g h b o r s favored English over French as the l a n g u a g e of the enlarged C o m m o n Market, w i t h Great Britain (and Ireland) n o w m e m b e r s . See The International Herald Tribune, J a n u a r y 25, 1972.

Waning and Resurgence

47

pride came from a L. Lliboutry, Professor of Science at Grenoble, stating what one often heard from French scientists: I fear that you fail to realize fully that over the last twenty years French has been supplanted by English as the universal scientific language. I tell you this brutality, and not with any gaiety of heart. . . When I wish to have one of the results of my teaching or of my own theoretical studies considered on the international plane, I must publish in English . . . [One reason for this is that] there are anglo-saxon journals in all of the disciplines of an international calibre . . . Nothing like this exists in France where the journals are too numerous, each often being the organ of an institute or of a small clan . . . [When] will it be understood . . . that the publicizing of France abroad does not effectively occur through the teaching of French? (Le Monde, January 28,1970). 8

These various testimonies indicated that English after World War II was the supreme rival, if not enemy; it was English that threatened the universal role of the French language, just as it was English, or American, that threatened to corrupt the French language within the hexagon itself. A fact that caused alarm to those Frenchmen concerned with the radiation of the French language was that in face of about 600 million anglophones "we do not have numbers with us", as Marc Blancpain (1967) put it — there were not, he observed, more than 75 million francophones in the world (although a banner on his book claimed 200 million!), and many of the figures usually given were inflated by including masses whose élites might know French, but who themselves did not (pp. Ill—13).9 8

T h e g r o w i n g i m p o r t a n c e of English as the language of science could be seen in the fact that all the articles in Italy's Nuovo Cimento, perhaps her m o s t important j o u r n a l of physics, and 50 percent o f G e r m a n y ' s Physikalische Zeitung, were in English (in 1968). See Joe Rogaly, " B e g g i n g P o m p i d o u ' s Pardon, b u t English is Still W i n n i n g " , in the Daily Star (Beirut), Sunday Supplement, J u n e 20, 1971, p. 10. Rogaly's article was principally based o n papers delivered at a conference in 1970 in L u x e m b o u r g sponsored b y the Institute of Linguistics (London) o n the t h e m e "English - a European Language?" In Le Monde, J u n e 8, 1971, Alfred Sauvy strongly c o n d e m n e d French scientists for their increasing use of English in scholarly articles and public lectures. M a u r i c e Duverger, in an article o n the " D e c a d e n c e " of the French university, cited as evidence for his t h e m e a decline in the n u m b e r of French scientific periodicals (Le Monde, O c t o b e r 18, 1973). H u g h e s (1975) observes that the migration o f m a n y G e r m a n and other intellectuals and scientists to England and the U n i t e d States before W o r l d War II w a s of m a j o r cultural importance: " W i t h i n less than a generation English almost effortlessly replaced G e r m a n as t h e lingua franca of logical analysis" (p. 34). 9

While the universality and the quantitative extension of a language w e r e not t h e s a m e thing, o f course, M r s . Jacqueline M a r x , a philologist, mortified s o m e F r e n c h m e n b y e x c l u d ing French f r o m her listing of the w o r l d ' s big ten (The International Herald Tribune, S e p t e m b e r 26, 1972). T h e big ten were: Mandarin C h i n e s e (605 million), English (333 million), Great Russian (206 million), Spanish (102 million), Hindi (192 million), G e r m a n (120 million), Arabic (109 million), Bengali (108 million), Portuguese (108 million), Japanese (105 million). She gave French 80 million speakers.

48

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Resurgence

Also disturbing were the statistics of the growing relative importance of English in many areas. In 1952, according to Pierre Burney, 21.8 percent of the world production of books was in English (9.8 percent in French); one half of the world newspapers and 60 percent of world broadcasts were in English and, in the United Nations, English was used 65 percent of the time, French 30 percent. While in 1931 France received 17,261 foreign students and the United States and Great Britain combined received 11,850, in 1961 France received 16,000 and the "anglo-saxons" 50,000. In the same year, the "anglo-saxons" exported five times as many books as France (and of the latter only 7.5 percent were scientific and technical); and of the 58 most translated authors of the world, 12 were French, 23 were "anglo-saxon" (Burney 1962, pp. 55-7). 10 As for the French boast of the importance of French in the United Nations (largely because of the presence of the various francophone African states), Hyacinthe de Montera, a passionate linguistic expansionist, lamented (in 1966) that the populations of a Chad or a Cambodia were minor compared to a Nigeria or an India. Like others in the somber days of the Algerian Revolution, Montera referred to Lebanon as the only "haven" (réduit) in the whole Middle East in which French was still holding out against English (1966, p. 108).11 In the sphere of business affairs, similar alarm was expressed by Michel Doucet in an article entitled "Sommes-nous menacés d'un monopole linguistique?" (Vie et Langage, Aug. 1970, pp. 422^1). 12 Considering the growing use of English standardized terms and forms in international business and the fact that the "anglo-saxons" dominated the world of computers, Doucet warned that the English language might well be the exclusive language of international business in the future. In the area of international diplomacy, where once the French language was so comfortably predominant, there was much anxiety expressed as to the current role of French. It was disturbing for example, that in 1954 a Uruguayan resolution presented at the General Conference of U N E S C O 10 A c c o r d i n g to Time (October 29, 1972, p. 24), of all current published abstracts in physics 78 percent w e r e in English (7 percent in French); of all chemical abstracts 44 percent w e r e in English (5 percent in French). As C o r b e t t (1972, p. 15) observed, the budget of the French O R T F ' s general overseas p r o g r a m w a s surprisingly only one sixth of the B B C ' s . 11 In 1972, of the speeches given in t h e U n i t e d N a t i o n s General Assembly, it was estimated that 125 w e r e in English, 33 in French, 18 in Spanish, 10 in Arabic and 6 in Russian (Le Français dans le monde, O c t - N o v 1973, p. 15). 12 In 1974 a g r o u p of concerned committees, including the Haut Comité pour la Defense et l'Expansion de la Langue Française m o u n t e d a campaign called " V e n d r e en Française" to counter inroads o f English into the language of salesmanship (Le Monde, August 4-5, 1974).

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49

(in Montevideo), in favor of the adoption of only Spanish and English as working languages almost passed; (Burney 1962, p. 61)13 that at the Bandung Conference in 1955 the exclusive language used was English; that the leading language used by the Russians and Chinese in their radio broadcasts and in their cheap reprints distributed all over the world was English; and that, as the French delegate complained before a budgeting committee of the United Nations in 1966, only 15.8 percent of the posts in the Secretariat (1,647) in all) were held by francophones, while one quarter of all members of the United Nations were French speakers. He was supported by the Tunisian delegate who protested that some applicants for jobs in the United Nations had been rejected because of their poor English while many English speakers appointed knew no French (Le Monde, November 30, 1966).14 The French were, of course, justified in seeing the expansion of English as a challenge and a threat since World War II. In 1965 (June 11), President Johnson signed a statement to the effect that because of the growing world need for English as a lingua franca, the United States would sponsor and promote the teaching and use of English abroad as "a major policy". This of course confirmed already existing programs, public and private. This statement among other things gave sanction to plans that had been developed by the Office of Educational and Social Development of the Agency for International Development (AID) since 1960, when an estimate was made that its program would need as much as $50,000,000, most of which was to be devoted to the training of English teachers abroad because the world demand was so great. It would probably be impossible to determine how many students were being taught English by public and private English and American institutions or agencies, but the figures were enormous. 15 According to one source, English was being taught abroad in 13

T o y n b e e (1934—1961) s a w English as already the international language as early as 1923 in areas outside the political orbits of either England or France (pp. 506-9). In this year Michael Borodin, Russia's delegate to the K u o m i n t a n g at C a n t o n delivered his anti-Western diatribes in English. In 1937 (August 21) the Russo-Chinese Pact o f Friendship and N o n - A g g r e s s i o n was d r a w n u p in English. 14 It m u s t have upset m a n y a French linguistic nationalist to hear that during telephone conversations President Giscard d'Estaing and Chancellor H e l m u t Schmidt spoke in fluent English (Newsweek, J u n e 10, 1974, p. 22). 15 Material for such a study appears in English Language Programs of the Agency for International Development issued periodically, and the s u m m a r i e s issued by various international conferences such as the N i n t h C o n f e r e n c e o n Second Language Problems, Tunis, April 22-7, 1968. T h i n g s w e r e not easier for t h e French considering that they vied w i t h b o t h the U n i t e d States and Great Britain w h o , o n occasion, pooled their efforts, as for example w h e n t h e B B C

50

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and

Resurgence

1966 by at least five American agencies and, of course, at many private foundations and institutions like the American University of Beirut, Athens College and the Robert College in Istanbul (Alden 1966).16 The five government bodies were: AID, which, among other things, provided for English training to the some 6,000 trainees it brought to the United States yearly; the State Department, which sponsored about 300 Americans a year to help in English teaching abroad; the Peace Corps, 2,900 of whose members taught English in 1965; the Department of Defense, which, under the Military Assistance Program aiming primarily to equip foreigners linguistically to handle military equipment, taught 100,000 people in English in 45 different countries; and, finally, the United States Information Agency, which, in 1963, spent about $5,000,000 teaching about 285,000 students English in different countries. Besides almost inexhaustible resources, compared to France, the United States, and of course Great Britain, had the advantage over French of possessing in many respects a simpler language, as far as teaching goes, than did France. As Barnett (1962) observed, in English the sex of nouns was no problem; adjectives and adverbs were invariable; as a blend of Teutonic and Latin languages much of its vocabulary was familiar to peoples of each language group; and, perhaps most important of all, English was more "tolerant" than French in the sense that there was less stigma attached to speaking it badly in most "anglo-saxon" circles than was true with the French where they prevailed. 17 This relative intolerance of the French in regard to their language was

and the Voice of America together prepared cooperative radio programs on the English language in 1970. In regard to broadcasting as a medium of language radiation, in general, the French were remarkably passive. In 1974, they were only tenth among the nations providing short-wave programs to the rest of the world, behind even Albania! The United States was fourth (together with Egypt), and Great Britain was second (together with China). Russia was easily first. See Le Monde, December 18, 1974. 16 Robert College later became the University of the Bosphorus, under Turkish control. 17 Barnett, of course, admitted that spelling was an exception to his argument for the simplicity of English and cited Bernard Shaw's famous variation of the spelling o f f i s h " as "ghoti". There were Frenchmen who were concerned about the relative "intolerance" of French. According to Legris, op. cit., the Haut Comité favored teaching a simplified French abroad, but was opposed in this by the Foreign Ministry. And Georges Manigley in Esprit 1962 (pp. 711-22, "En Afrique du Sud") observed that South Americans had trouble learning French because they were overly inhibited by the fear of making errors - this in marked contrast to a language like Italian. Jacques Cellard, Le Monde language specialist, warned against the French tendency to press for "perfectionsim" in teaching their language - this tended, he wrote, to limit its radiation (Le Monde, August 4-5, 1974).

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used by Yves Person, a linguistic regionalist discussed earlier, as part o f his polemic against French "cultural imperialism", the tendency o f the French to be hostile toward other cultures and languages and to seek to absorb them through assimilation (Temps Modernes 1973, pp. 90-118, "Impérialisme Linguistique et Colonialisme"). 1 8 H e contrasted the French with the British, w h o had never had a consistent policy of cultural assimilation, witness the survival of French in Quebec and Mauritius, and the encouragement English once gave, in Sierra Leone and elsewhere, to native Africans to develop native alphabets and a literature. Person's explanation for Britain's relative tolerance was that, in England, a francophone élite gradually abandoned its "universal" language to find an identification with its o w n people (by adopting English), while in France, as indicated, the élite o f France adopted the myth of universality to mold diverse peoples into a nation.

RESURGENCE 19

The crisis discussed continued to provide anxiety through the fifties, but at the same time and often within the bosoms o f the same people there arose a feeling of optimism, o f confidence (see e.g. Balous 1970, Montera 1966, Viatte 1969, Blancpain 1967). This optimism predated the return o f General de Gaulle to power in 1958, but it was more pronounced after the foundation of the Fifth Republic than it had been earlier. This was espe18 Person exaggerated, I believe, but his hypothesis had some truth to it. In Africa, the British encouraged native languages f r o m the start. In m a n y areas native dialects were used in primary school, and Swahili in secondary in Tanganyika. O f t e n native dialects were used for administrative purposes; for example, five N o r t h e r n Rhodesian dialects were used in administration. See Hailey (1957, pp. 92-109, 1132-206, 1220-32). T h e French, even w h e n they liberalized their empire, w e r e determined, at the Brazzaville Conference of 1944, to prevent the use of native dialects. Person included the Americans a m o n g those w h o are linguistically tolerant. It is interesting that w h e n American missionaries established the American University of Beirut in 1866 (then called T h e Syrian Protestant College), they taught all subjects in Arabic. T h e y transferred to English after 1880 w h e n they were unable to find enough personnel able to teach m o d e r n subjects in Arabic or suitable text-books, and w h e n they came to the decision, in the w o r d s of the founding president, Daniel Bliss, that students with a thorough k n o w l e d g e of Arabic alone would be "shut u p to the w o r s t part of the dead past" (see Annual Reports: Board of Managers: Syrian Protestant College 1866-67 1901-02; Beirut, American University of Beirut, n.d., pp. 44-5, 225). T h u s Arabic was used to proselytize, English to introduce modernity.

I picked this rubric in part to echo the title of the last volume of de Gaulle's memoirs (covering the years 1958-1962), "La Renouveau".

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daily true, for evident reasons, among Gaullist nationalists - one need only compare a Dutourd writing earlier and a Saint Robert writing after 1958 (Dutourd 1957, Saint Robert 1970). 20 The confidence was that French could hold its own as a universal language even if English prospered; that with the advance o f French industrialization and technology, French was being accepted increasingly as a vehicle o f modernity and that it continued to serve as the vehicle - many would say as the vehicle of choice - o f contemporary humanism. A sense of urgency and dedication among many French linguistic expansionsists, in short, replaced the older sense o f fatality and self-pity. What were the reasons for this "resurgence" o f hope for the French language? Perhaps the most important reason for the feeling that a resurgence had now followed upon the heels o f the crisis of confidence was, paradoxically if one will, the entry into the United Nations of France's previous charges as sovereign states following the virtual complete liquidation o f the French empire. Initially, at San Francisco (April 25-June 25, 1945), only English, Spanish and Russian had been proposed as working languages - French was only accepted as offical through the pressure o f the then prime minister, George Bidault, and this by only one vote. On December 4, 1967, however, by 73 votes to 9, with 26 abstentions, it was decided that all documents o f the United Nations be published in English and French simultaneously (Balous 1970, p. 34). 21 B y this time France had acquired, both because o f the devolution o f her empire and by simultaneously becoming a strong financial supporter o f her previous charges, a leading reputation as a friend of the Third World. This made it morally easier for many of her previous colonies to continue to use French as both official and/or working national languages. As early as 1962 a French writer could boast that there were twenty-two francophone states in the United Nations, and that by adding five additional states for whom French was a habitual language (Laos, Cambodia, Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon) the francophone sector constituted one third of the United Nation's total membership (Léger, " U n e Responsabilité commune" in Esprit 1962, pp. 564-71, p. 566). 22 B y 1958 France had 20 Hughes (1968) described France as emerging from its provincialism in the sixties with the decline of the prestige o f the "mandarins" and the rise to influence o f technicians and pragmatists. O f world cultural importance, he believed, were contributions o f the Annales historians and Claude Lévi-Strauss (pp. 261-3). 21 Chinese, in 1945, was also belatedly accepted as an official language o f the United Nations, and Arabic in 1973. 22 Léger's importance as a French linguistic expansionist is discussed below.

Waning and Resurgence

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recovered "sinon sa place, du moins ses chances" according to Boly (1971, pp. 33-5). N o w about one third of all delegations were French-speaking and the number of interventions in French was roughly equal to those in English. French remained the official language of the International Court of Justice (in The Hague) and equal to English in U N E S C O , and it was the principal language at the World Conference on the Rights of Man (Tehran, 1968). In 1967, again by a vote of 73 to 9 the United Nations Assembly voted that henceforth French would be treated as equal to English in the recruitment of high administrative personnel and in the documentation services. By 1970 one out of every four nations was francophone, and French was the official language or language of instruction in 31 countries; and as a subject of study it was expanding in virginal areas like anglophone East Africa, and was even returning as a presence in certain Middle Eastern countries f r o m which the fury of nationalism had earlier excluded it. 23 While the total number of French-speaking people in the world might be only aroUnd 80 million, it could be argued, as did Jean-Marc Léger, about 160 million could be included in the French orbit if one added those w h o had a "vocation" to speak it, i.e., those whose parents are illiterate or monolingual but w h o would k n o w French because French had been adopted as a language of education in states where French was being universalized (Esprit 1962, p. 566). Other boasts made were that peoples throughout the world had n o w realized that France was a major scientific and industrial nation and not only "a museum for tourists" (ibid., p. 562). 24 And that French "coopérants" (technical assistants), many of w h o m were teaching French in many parts of the world, numbered as many as 46,000, whereas the United States 23

A non-francophone African state in which the French presence expanded after 1966 when agreements of cooperation were signed was Ethiopia. In 1972 French was obligatory in 28 secondary establishments, 170 French professors were serving as teachers (to 27,000 pupils), over 100 Ethiopian students were studying in France. Important was the French-Ethiopian Lycée Guebré Mariam with 1,339 Ethiopian students out of a total of 1,920 (Lc Monde, January 16, 1973). 24 Revealing was the tribute paid to France in a special issue of Le Jour - An-Nahar in July 1970, entitled France-Monde Arabe. The emphasis in this joint French-Lebanese tribute was upon France's industrial development and its particular industrial and commerical presence in the Middle East. Part of this presence were a pipeline, twenty locomotives and large oil concessions in Iraq; t w o hotels and oil concessions in Saudi Arabia; a desalination plant in Kuwait; extensive holdings in Lebanon, and the concession to enlarge Beirut's International Airport and to install the Beirut-Marseilles cable-line. Statistical charts were presented with curves showing France's successful progress in various industrial and commerical fields relative to other major powers.

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Waning and Resurgence

exported about 30,000 technical assistants as teachers, Britain 20,000 and Russia 5,000 (Esprit 1970, Hessel, " D e la Décolonisation à la coopération", p. 512). Gaullists, naturally, attributed France's success to the General and to the regime he had established, although in fairness one should observe that France's atomic b o m b venture, her policy of decolonization in IndoChina, Morocco and Tunisia and many economic innovations belong to the credit of the Fourth Republic. A most fervent defender of the Gaullist point of view was Philippe de Saint Robert w h o argued, in regard to the Arab world, that France now, by having returned to its traditional role as the ally of Islam and the Arabs - as during the time of Francis I (and Napoleon, he wrote!) - was outfoxing the dreadful "anglo-saxons" w h o had always sought to divide and conquer, w h o had created Israel and w h o selfishly tried to exclude France f r o m her natural role as a protector of Christians and Christian sites in the area. As a result, today only France was in a position to mediate between the Arabs and " . . . the world dictatorship of the United States". This may sound arrogant and unfair, but for anyone familiar with the current Middle Eastern situation, not wholly fanciful. As for Africa, a witty British commentator on B B C (Friday, October 23, 1970), observing that while English-speaking African states were lambasting Britain for filling South African arms orders, the French-speaking states were only uttering pious generalities in regard to France's doing exactly the same, suggested, echoing Laurence Sterne, that ". . . in matters of the heart things are better ordered in France." 2 5 Reflecting France's proud concern for cultural and linguistic activities and successes abroad was a regular section of Culture Française entitled "chronique internationale de la culture française". T w o random issues (numbers 2 and 4, 1968) informed the reader that, inter alia: French was becoming obligatory in 22 government schools in Ethiopia and France was sending 75 professors to teach there and to help train Ethiopians in the teaching of French in a new state normal school; Ahmed Ben Salah, the 25

Legris could have cited France's success as an exporter of weapons to justify his contention that France was a major "modern" power: in 1970 France sold $1.3 billion in arms of which $929 million was aeronautical equipment (The International Herald Tribune, July 2-3, 1970). Sarcastically, Josette Alia in Le Nouvel Observateur (November 9, 1970, pp. 24-5) observed that within the last five years, while boasting of its role as a mediator for peace in many parts of the world, France had become one of the world's largest exporters of arms. In the same publication, (June 2, 1975, pp. 21-3) Francois Henri de Virieu and Paul Thibau observed that France was the world's third largest arms merchant. They entitled their article: "La Mort 'Made in France' ".

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then Secretary of State for the Plan in Tunisia, was quoted as insisting that French continue to be taught in primary schools so that Tunisia might continue to have "an extra opening on the world of the sciences and the arts"; in Algeria the secretary-general of the Ministry of Education was quoted as saying the same for Algeria, and that Algeria planned to send a mission to France to recruit 2,000 teachers; in Germany the Association of Book-Stores was giving Senghor a prize because he had "used his mastery of the French language to spread the black man's message to the rest of the world"; in Israel a 10-15 percent increase in the number of French professors and classes was envisaged - 45,000 Israeli students were studying in primary and secondary schools, 5,000 in the university; in Malaysia, French was to become an optional language in secondary school starting in 1970; in Rumania a large exhibition of French books was planned — and according to a new agreement cultural exchanges would be increased; and a Franco-Soviet colloquium on nuclear physics had been held. Also revealing is the pride with which Frenchmen liked to quote tributes to their language and culture. Thus Yacono, at the end of his estimable short Histoire de la colonisation française (1969), quoted Prince Sihanouk as saying, "Cambodia could be the sanctuary of French culture", as one of several similar tributes. Many a French heart beat faster at Aimé Césaire's greeting to André Malraux in 1958: "I salute in your person the great French nation to which we are passionately attached", and one of Colonel Boumedienne's chief aides knew his audience when during tensions over the oil question in 1971 he remarked to Paul Balta: " T o receive praise in Arabic is doubtlessly comforting, but to argue in French and even to exchange insults in French, that shows that relations are of a special sort, and that he who insults you is part of the family. In the first case the other is an ally or a friend, but nevertheless a stranger "(Balta and Rullean 1973, p. 168).26 It remained to be seen if French linguistic chauvinism - at least in its particularly militant form under de Gaulle - would survive the General's inspiration or seem so important to France's more internationally-minded 26

Hoffmann (1974, pp. 231-3, 265-6, 405) insisted that de Gaulle was quite convinced of France's special role to preserve "culture" against mechanization and "Americanization". De Gaulle exhibited, stated Hoffmann, a typical French characteristic of "confusing national temperament with the conscience of mankind . . ." This syndrome was given expression by Bertrand Fessard de Foucault, Le Monde, February 1, 1975, in an article "Quelle Politique Arabe?" H e described France as having in common with the Arabs "une même nostalgie d'une civilisation moins matérialiste" than that of utilitarian America, and a civilisation "plus métaphysique", than that of the communist East.

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younger generations. Reporting on the annual general assembly o f the Alliance Française in 1973, Ginette Guitard-Auviste detected signs of impatience with self-consciousness over the Anglo-French linguistic Kulturkampf, a "conflit désuet" she called it (Le Monde, June 19, 1973). She found a comment by an English delegate to the effect that one can be concise in English but only if one knows French, more in keeping with the spirit o f the meeting than the traditional boast o f Maurice Druon, then Minister o f Cultural Affairs, who declared: "French is the language that is most appropriate for the expression o f thought, irreplaceable because o f its precision and variety." If Guitard-Auviste was right, the linguistic chauvinism discussed in this book would constitute only a historical episode, but it seemed unlikely that the French passion for her language would die easily if for no other reason than that its international use provided distinct commercial and political advantages, as well as affective ones. This was the opinion President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing expressed during the electoral campaign o f 1974: "There is an interdependence between the economic power o f a nation and the radiation o f its culture. I mean, interdependence, advisedly. This means not only that the material presence o f a nation opens the way to its intellectual presence, but also that this, in turn, thanks especially to the vehicle o f language, contributes to economic dynamism on world markets. This is why the radiation o f French culture in the world must be ceaselessly reinforced and extended. This is why this linguistic and intellectual community one calls Francophonia must be considered an essential element in our political policy" (April 21, 1974. Quoted in Le Monde, December 18, 1974). It was not really until after 1945 that France began to embark upon a positive and aggressive policy in regard to the radiation o f French. Earlier, as mentioned, the government had helped support the Alliance Française and the Mission Laique and in 1911 a modest Bureau des Œuvres (called in 1920 the Service des Œuvres) was attached to the Ministry o f Foreign Affairs to handle cultural matters abroad. But generally it was assumed that in the normal order o f things no real threat existed to a language spoken so widely in the world and held to be by so many the hnguagepar excellence o f cosmopolitan culture. All o f this, as seen, changed with the impact o f the fall o f France in 1940 and then later with the disintegration o f the French Empire. The French language needed now to be defended and to be sponsored and promoted abroad with political artifice, if need be. The heightened, if not new, cultural expansionist policy began in 1945 when the Service des Œuvres was transformed into the Direction Générale

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57

des Relations Culturelles, Scientifiques et Techniques (henceforth D G R C ) attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and provided in 1958 with a budget of 180 million francs. The Rapport sur le Second Plan Quinquennal d'Expansion Culturelle of the D G R C made no bones about the expansionist intent of the French government and emphasized the crucial value of cultural expansion to France's political and economic interests (Balous 1970, pp. 12-13). After 1945 France expanded her cultural activities abroad in all areas. For example, in 1949 there were only 14 "conseillers culturels" attached to French embassies abroad, in 1970 there were 100; in 1959—1960, 12,362 French teachers served abroad, in 1968—1969 there were 33,814, and in 1971, 665 million francs were allotted to the radiation of French. In 1975, French public aid to developing nations was 3,347,571,000 francs, of which 2,163,000,000 went into "coopération" (ibid., pp. 11-12, 173; Le Monde, January 2, 1975). Since the establishment of the Fifth Republic the most important statement of France's expansionist cultural policy was, perhaps, the special "Jeanneney" report published in 1963 (Jeanneney, chief ed. 1963). O n e might describe this document as the crucial policy paper by the Gaullist government of France's role in regard to financial and cultural cooperation with the Third World, but it also, by implication, set forth French cultural policy in regard to the world in general. Declaring that "decolonisation" was virtually completed and that a new relationship with the countries of the Third World must be sought - one that did not rest on past habits and one that must seek the advancement of the underdeveloped nations — it boasted of the fact that contemporaneously France was spending m o r e in assistance per capita than any other developed nation and that it came second to the United States absolutely. By implication the report rejected the idea that educational assistance aimed at making others as French as possible when it suggested that France must avoid enculturating students abroad or at h o m e to become " u n r o o t e d " members of their own particular communities - education must be adapted to the needs and to the character of peoples it helps. The report stated that the "real reasons for a French Policy of Cooperation" were not financial reward but the fulfillment of a duty to humanity because France needed to "act well beyond the confines of the hexagon" - this was in her character (I: pp. 43-8). T o avoid the risk of " e n n u i " it stated: " A radiation [rayonnement] is necessary to her, one that must be the labor of men willing to expatriate themselves and export their culture, a culture presuming to universality [prétendant à I 'universalité]. ' ' O f course, advantages would accrue to France in the fields of trade and politics

58

Waning and

Resurgence

and, of course, the teaching of French abroad was a form of "national expansion". Nevertheless, the report insisted, those it aided would derive great benefits from dealing with a nation that had shown its love for liberty, that provided a source of support alternative to the super-powers, and that possessed a language that offered an opening to modern science and technology (II: p. 239). France, herself, according to the report: . . . desires more than any other nation to diffuse far and wide its language and culture. Her need for intellectual radiation finds good use among peoples whose o w n language is badly adapted to modern ideas and technics or which is not of use in international affairs; it [French] provides them with a mode of expression and a method o f thought.

In spite of sharp criticism from several quarters, the most important being the columns of Paris Match, whose editor Raymond Cartier gave his name to the term "carriérisme" (the doctrine that French money be used to develop France and not others), it was essentially the approach outlined in the Jeanneney Report which set the guidelines for France's policies of cultural aid, as well as of "coopération" more generally, in regard to the Third World." By 1970 the principal agencies responsible for French radiation had been established. As indicated, the most important body dealing with cultural radiation was the DGRC established in 1945. It handled all matters to do with culture in all parts of the world except for sub-Sahara Africa and Madagascar (in 1966—1967 it absorbed the autonomous Sous-Direction de la Coopération

Technique avec l'Algérie).

It w a s h o u s e d in the Quai

d'Orsay.

Sub-Sahara Africa and Madagascar were handled until 1974 by the Minis27

F o r a s u m m a r y of the debate o v e r t h e R e p o r t , sep G o r d o n (1966, pp. 231—2). For an extended critical discussion of " c o o p é r a t i o n " see Esprit (1970) as well as Jean Lacouture and Philippe Decraene, in Le Monde, O c t o b e r 24, 25, 26, 1964. O n e crucial question raised w a s w h e t h e r " c o o p é r a t i o n " was not, in effect, a neo-colonialist w a y of maintaining friendly conservative élites in p o w e r . Since 1963, while the v o l u m e of French assistance increased, the percentage of national income contributed declined, f r o m 2.30 percent to 1.65 percent. O n e t h i r d of this aid in 1972 w e n t to French overseas d e p a r t m e n t s and territories (and so strictly speaking w a s not foreign aid) and 75 percent of the remaining t w o thirds w e n t t o f r a n c o p h o n e Africa. T h i s was m a d e clear in the h i t h e r t o unpublished Rapport Gorse, a study of French f o r e i g n aid and cooperation made f o r the G o v e r n m e n t under the chairmanship of G e o r g e s Gorse. T h e report raised questions similar to those raised by the Jeanneney report as to w h e t h e r French aid was suitably adapted t o the real needs of developing nations, and as t o w h e t h e r " c o o p é r a t i o n " was in fact a t w o - w a y proposition. T h e report was s u m m a r i z e d in Balta and Rulleau (1973, pp. 210-13). T h e projected budget for " c o o p é r a t i o n " for 1975 w a s 2,163 billion francs (to 1,973 in 1974). T h e 1975 figure, although higher, represented less value because of the inflationary factor - it was 0.812 percent o f the national budget, 0.14 percent of t h e G N P (Le Monde, N o v e m b e r 20, 1974).

Waning and

59

Resurgence

tère de la Coopération established in 1961 and which in 1966 became the Secrétariat d'Etat Chargé de la Coopération.

Since 1974, all c o o p e r a t i o n w i t h

independent francophone states came under this ministry (under the direction of Pierre Abelin). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs continued to handle non-francophone areas. The Comores, and Afars and Issas were handled b y t h e Secrétariat d'État aux Departments

et Territoires

d'Outre-Mer.

Other

administrative bodies were the Direction de la Coopération avec la Communauté et l'Étranger in the Ministry of Education, which handled cultural and educational matters having to do with Europe in particular, and the Office National

des Universités

et Écoles Françaises w h i c h dealt i n p a r t i c u l a r

with recruiting professors for missions to Great Britain, Germany, and Italy. A u n i q u e p u b l i c o r g a n i z a t i o n w a s t h e Haut Comité pour la Défense de la

Langue Française, created in 1966, which came directly under the Prime Minister. As its name indicated, it was established to help radiate the French language and also to work out means of improving the quality and the pedagogy of French. Among the original members were some of France's leading intellectuals and academicians. Links with other organizations concerned with language and its diffusion were assured by the presence on the committee of figures like Marc Blancpain, the SecretaryGeneral of the Alliance Française, Maurice Genevoix, permanent Secretary of the French Academy, and George Gougenheim, Director of the Centre de Recherche et d'Études pour la Diffusion

du Français,

a private association

(Balous 1970, pp. 65-71). In 1974 its rapporteur général was Philippe Rossillon. The Organization of French Radio and Television (ORTF), since 1969 when it absorbed the independent Office de Coopération Radiophonique (OCORA), had a center to handle matters of cooperation and foreign affairs insofar as they involved relations with other countries making use of French communication facilities. 28 In 1974 it was decided to dissolve the O R T F in its present form, and to transform it into a more independent body. Almost all private agencies of radiation received aid and sponsorship by the government in one form or another and so had best be designated as private-public. The first important non-sectarian private establishment for the teaching 28

Concern was often expressed, as seen, by Frenchmen involved in linguistic expansion over the worldwide networks of VOA and BBC, neither of which the French could match, as well as over the threat of an "anglo-saxon" monopoly of satellite communication.

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Waning and Resurgence

o f French language and culture to foreigners within France and all over the world was the Alliance Française, established in 1883. It had over one thousand language centers throughout the world. In 1974 its director was Marc Blancpain. O f great importance was its École Internationale de Langue et de Civilisation Française in Paris. The Alliance worked in close conjunction with the ministries o f Foreign Affairs and Education, and it collaborated with the Alliance Israélite Universelle which had over eighty centers in the world. Also o f major importance was the Mission Laique Française, founded in 1902 under the patronage o f figures as eminent as General Gallieni, Raymond Poincaré, Gaston Doumergue and Edouard Herriot. It received support from the Ministry o f Foreign Affairs and ran schools in many parts o f the world. Jean de Broglie was director of yet another group, the Association de Solidarité Francophone. The first educational organizations, however, to spread French education and language abroad were missionary institutions. Such institutions numbered around ten thousand, teaching over one million students. (Balous 1970, pp. 65-71). The two largest missionary groups in terms o f numbers of establishments were the Congrégation des Filles de la Charité and the Franciscaines Missionnaires de Marie. Important in recruiting personnel for these schools was the Comité Catholique des Amitiés Françaises. The Protestants operated through Le Comité Protestant des Amitiés Françaises dans le Monde. Anti-clericalism in France had hardly ever interfered with the Foreign Office helping these organizations financially - anticlericalism, said Gambetta, stopped at the borders o f France. Through a Fonds Culturel (established in 1957) various associations concerned with distributing French books abroad were also helped financially by the government. One such association was S O D E X P O R T (Sociétépour la Diffusion et l'Exportation de Livres Scientifique et Techniques), an organization created in 1960 and representing forty publishers. These various organizations, public and private, were only among the most important agencies of radiation. T o their list should be added organizations in other French-speaking countries which served the same purpose: for example, the Académie Mauricienne (founded 1964); the Académie Royale de Langue et de Littérature Française (founded 1920, and located in Brussels); the Amitiés Françaises (an establishment in Luxembourg that worked closely with the Alliance Française); the Office de la Langue Française o f Quebec (founded in 1961); and the Société Nationale des Acadiens of New Brunswick. And, finally, there were various international organizations serving similar purposes in which France participated, usually as the

Waning and Resurgence

61

leading member. T h e most recent and the most important was the Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique, discussed below. Also important were sundry associations of professors, lawyers, journalists and veterans of francophone states: the Fédération du Français Universel in Paris (founded 1964) which, among other things, organized important Biennales (the first in N a m u r , 1965, later ones in Quebec, 1967, and Dakar, 1973); AUPELF, the Association des Universités Partiellement ou Entièrement de Langue Française (founded 1961 at the initiative of the University of Montreal); the Association des Communités de Langue Française (founded 1959) which aimed to promote cultural exchanges between member states; and the Association Internationale des Parlementaires de Langue Française (AIPLF), whose president in 1972 was Charles Helou, the ex-president of Lebanon. Created in 1966, this body sought to encourage parliamentary government throughout the francophone world. Another organization was the Office du Bon Langage, founded in Brussels in 1961. It organized yearly Quinzaines du Bon Langage. In 1971 its secretary general, Albert Deppagne, published a work entitled Chasse aux Belgicismes, an effort to purify Walloon of foreignisms. All of these organizations shared the view expressed by Alain Guillermou, once Secretary-General of the prestigious Conseil Internationale de là Langue Française (founded 1967), an international body composed of grammarians and linguists, that a standard international French must be maintained to avoid the segmentation and fragmentation that had marked the decline of Latin. 29 O n e might wonder w h y such a plethora of organizations, bewildering to any student of the subject, existed to promote the very same goals. It was some relief to learn that one of the proposals of the fifth Biennale of the French Language, held in 1973 in Dakar, was that these various organizations be integrated under a c o m m o n umbrella ( Vie et Langage, June 1974, pp. 315-19). At this meeting, as on many other similar occasions, present were the same individuals defending the same views: Marc Blancpain, Alain Guillermou, Robert Cornevin, Maurice Druon, Auguste Viatte. Most of these French linguistic expansionists were distinguished academi28

See his speech at the "Journées de la Francophonie" world conference in December 1967 (Francophonie '68 1969, pp. 27-8). Guillermou made the revealing statement that he, personally, did all he could to force French scholars addressing international conferences to give their talks in French. The Conseil was preparing a glossary of international French whose aim was to indicate what words were not permissible as well as what words of local provenance could be used because of their particular flavor or ancestry in old French.

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62

dans, writers, many with wide experiences as civil servants in different parts of the world. Druon, for example, was a well-known writer and at one time Minister of Culture, Viatte a professor w h o had taught in the United States, Canada and Switzerland, and Cornevin was an expert on Africa where he had served as an administrator in Dahomey, Senegal and Togo. 3 0 The most important vehicle of radiation was, of course, education, and in the field of international education the French record was impressive indeed. French teachers abroad numbered, in 1970 for example, 33,814, serving in 110 countries (Balous 1970, pp. 51-71). In higher education the figures were 465 in Algeria, 164 in Morocco, 97 in Tunisia (constituting 67 percent of the faculty of the University of Tunis), 66 in Cambodia, 49 in Germany, 46 in England, 24 in Lebanon, 118 in Canada, 169 in the United States of America, 223 in Senegal (the University of Dakar), 112 in the Ivory Coast, 70 in Madagascar and 46 in the Cameroons. French lycées abroad were served by 10,000 teachers (teaching 682,000 students). Some of these lycées were very old (the Lycée de Berlin dated back to 1689, Galatasary in Istanbul to 1868, the Lycée Makteb-Esteqlal in Kabul to 1923) and some were very new, the Lycée Franco-Argentin de Buenos Aires, for example, opened in 1969. Some of the lycées come under the direction of the Foreign Ministry, the schools of the Mission Culturel for example. Others were private (under the Mission Laique or the Alliance Française). A third category included foreign schools under national Ministries of Education (as in Algeria and Morocco) whose language was French and to which France gave assistance. In 1970 the distribution of the total number of teachers, including men performing their military service as teachers according to the law of 1966, was as follows: 31 primary secondary superior technical counsellors and inspectors

30

7,662 13,350 1,525 2,555 1,662

Présence Francophone in its issues carries pictures and brief biographies of these figures as they appear as contributors in its pages. 31 Not included here were 400 private volunteers sponsored by the Association Française des Volontaires pour le Progrès.

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Waning and Resurgence

Distribution according to areas was: Morocco Algeria Africa and Madagascar Tunisia North America Latin America Middle East Europe

7,900 7,000 6,500 3,500 600 600 400 1,610

(The Reader should note that 93.6 percent served in "developing" countries.) T o focus by way of example upon one country in which the French presence (in 1970) had been particularly important, Algeria, one observed: the Office Universitaire et Culturel (under the Foreign Ministry) ran five secondary schools, fifty-five primary schools; 6,837 French teachers served in Algeria of which 6,150 were in the schools of the Algerian Ministry of Education; 865 French teachers also served in 150 various Catholic establishments (teaching 43,000 students). Since independence, the French were proud to point out that the number of Algerian Muslims learning French in schools had risen from 300,000 to over two million! The justified boast was made - one applicable to other parts of France's previous empire - that French was becoming, in addition to the élite language it was before, the language of the masses. O f course native nationalists would observe ironically, one reason for the struggle for independence was that the French government had done so little in this direction when in control. Also important parts of the French cultural presence were the numerous institutes and cultural centers sponsored by the French government or privately run. Among the some 60 institutes and over 150 cultural centers were the Académie de France in Rome (founded 1666), the École d'Athènes (1864), t h e Institut

Française d'Archéologie

Orientale

du Caire (1880), t o

mention only three. France also ran over one hundred language laboratories in France and abroad under the guidance of the Centre de Recherche pour la Diffusion du Français ( C R E D I F ) a n d t h e Bureau pour la Langue et la Civilisation Française ( B E L C ) .

d'Étude

The French presence was represented by film, radio and television

64

Waning and Resurgence

services which were financed by the Foreign Office, while the Association Française d'Action Artistique, whose members were drawn from the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education, sponsored French cultural activities, exhibitions, concerts and the like all over the world. As has already been mentioned, a fund existed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to sponsor the export of French books. 32 Important in the diffusion of French was the exposure of foreigners to the French language in France itself as students and migrant workers. Foreigners had studied in France ever since the Middle Ages; more recent figures include 1,770 students in 1900, 9,623 in 1939 and in 1973 over 40,000 of whom 24,304 were regularly inscribed in French universities (Balous 1970, pp. 103—12). Government scholarships included bourses universitaires and bourses de coopération technique. There were also scholarships to France provided by the United Nations, and many scholarships were also placed at the disposal of foreign French language universities. In addition scholarships were offered to foreigners by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

( C N R S ) a n d b y t h e École Pratique des Hautes

Etudes.

The tendency was for the government to increase the number of the bourses de perfectionnement and decrease the number of bourses d'études — the former required a licence or the equivalent — as foreign countries increased their capacity to educate their own students on the lower levels of instruction. Another way that French was diffused to various degrees of proficiency was through the presence in France of over three million migrant workers of w h o m possibly as many as one million were illiterate. Serious efforts, but with relatively little success, were being made to train these workers to read and write. Many different volunteer groups existed which were aided by the government, for example the CREDIF already mentioned which ran over 700 courses for North Africans, but most migrant workers picked up what French they could in daily intercourse. 33 Of greater importance for the future were the children of these migrants who attended French schools and were being "frenchified" (see Minces 1973, especially ch. 16). Their French education would present a problem of adaptation as Algeria 32

In 1966 France came third in the export of books in the world. Great Britain was first in the total value of her exports with 710,593,802 francs; the United States of America second with 594,336,000 francs; France third with 259,450,000 francs; and Germany fourth with 256,307,400 francs. But between 1958 and 1966 in the relative increase of value France was first with a 183 percent increase, the United States second with a 174 percent increase (Balous 1970, p. 79). 33 For current facts and figures on migrants in France, seeHommes et Migrations: Documents.

Waning and Resurgence

65

arabized her system o f education, and so complicated this country's search for her identity. The French language was also promoted abroad in ways that may seem byzantine to an outsider. According to French scholars, they were urged, implicitly if not explicitly, to insist upon delivering their papers before international conferences in French where this was possible, and one heard o f special supplements to salaries o f teachers abroad that were difficult to pin-point. Finally, the French language was promoted openly and enthusiastically, by many members o f the élites o f newly independent countries whose personal identity was French and who sincerely or because o f vested interests desired not only to maintain the French language in their countries, but to extend it nationally through universal education in this language. It was not strange that with the sweep o f nationalism and then o f communism that French as the language o f culture o f many élites should have lost its pre-eminent position o f the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. T o counter this the resurgence o f the sixties could do little. National languages had replaced French as the intrinsic vehicles of culture. But in spite o f this French remained in many parts o f the world an important second language, o f considerable extrinsic weight, after World War II. In the case o f most European nations the presence o f the French language, once so prestigious among their élites, was, by the end o f the nineteenth century, no longer a matter o f intimate importance to their sense o f national identity, and so we consider this presence in a cursory fashion. Those European nations for whom French had an important dimension o f identity, Belgium in particular, will be considered in the next chapter. As to the question o f whether French was to be the language o f the C o m m o n Market, one o f importance for the future of Europe's identity, as well as, o f course, for France's, in 1975 no prediction was possible except that English would remain its obvious rival. Generally, in the non-francophone West after World War II, French was declining relative to English. In Germany, since 1937, English had been Germany's first foreign language (French only had legal equality with English in the Saar and in four lycées along the French border; Balous 1970, pp. 140-7; Burney 1962, pp. 28-33). 3 4 In Spain, English was now the first German-French cultural agreements that came into force on July 28, 1955 - helping to reconcile these traditional enemies and prepare for an integrated Europe - provided for the study o f the language and culture of each in others' country. 34

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Waning and Resurgence

language in primary school; in Italian secondary schools, while about 70 percent of the students chose French as their second language, in scientific lycées, over 50 percent chose English and in technical and industrial institutions English was chosen by the great majority of the students. In 1974 Holland was seriously considering making French optional rather than obligatory in the first year of secondary education. In countries like Turkey and Greece where French had long been the language of much of the élite, the tide turned in favor of English. O n l y in Great Britain, understandably, did most students pick French in secondary schools as their second language. One analysis, made by the Reader's Digest in 1962, indicated: in Holland, of the 45 percent w h o spoke a foreign language, 31 percent spoke English and only 16 percent French (39 percent German); in West Germany, of the 22 percent w h o spoke a foreign language, 14 percent spoke English and only 7 percent French; in Italy, on the other hand, of the 14 percent w h o spoke a foreign language, 9 percent spoke French and 4 percent English (cited in Sampson 1968, p. 271). In Eastern Europe, where French had been once the language of much of the élite, the triumph of C o m m u n i s m had radically altered the scene, particularly after 1948 when foreign institutions were abolished in Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Poland and Bulgaria. The French language was of minor importance now in Eastern Europe except for Rumania whose people had always had a special link with France and had viewed themselves as a Latin people in a sea of Slavs (Balous 1970, pp. 147-54; Burney 1962, pp. 28-33). After 1964 w h e n France made cultural agreements with Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Poland matters improved somewhat. In Bulgaria by 1967, 60 percent of secondary school children chose French as their third language (Russian being second and obligatory); in Poland, only 20 percent picked French but there was an increase of those w h o did in higher education of 10 percent between 1966 and 1967. In Hungary the figure for secondary schools was 23 percent, in Czechoslovakia it was under 20 percent. 35 In the special case of Rumania, when in 1963 Russian ceased to be obligatory, French resumed its role as the most popular foreign l a n g u a g e 60 percent of the students in secondary school picked it in preference to either English or Russian as their second language of study. It was an obligatory language for four hours a week over a five-year period in the 35

H e r v é Lavenir believed that m a n y Eastern Europeans s a w French as a potential shield against the massive cultural pressures o f the t w o s u p e r - p o w e r s (Francophonie '68 1969, pp. 36-7).

Waning and Resurgence

67

Faculties, and in 1969 it began to be taught on an experimental basis in some primary classes for four hours a week. The delight felt by many Frenchmen in regard to Rumania could be seen in the comments o f j e a n de Beer, secretary of the French P.E.N. Club, on visiting Bucharest in 1964 (Le Monde, N o v e m b e r 7, 1964). H e found Ionesco, Camus and Sarraute popular and a visit f r o m de Gaulle was awaited " w i t h an impatience many Frenchmen cannot imagine . . ." French, he discovered, was still the language of communication among "les milieux cultivés" - one day while he was sitting in a fashionable restaurant, a young man came in to announce that Le Monde could be bought nearby; almost everybody leapt up to purchase a copy. Rumania, Beer declared, " . . . on the eastern frontier . . . keeps guard as Greece and R o m e once did over Mediterranean civilization". With the establishment since World War II of so many common European institutions, the C o m m o n Market being the most crucial, France was, inevitably, concerned with the role its language might n o w play as possibly the language of these institutions and so of Europe. O n the eve of England's entry into the EEC, much concern was felt as to whether French — in 1962 the working language in 85 percent of the EEC's business — might not be replaced by English, and that through this Europe might not become increasingly vulnerable to "Américanisation" and so lose its soul. 36 Indicative of this concern was the establishment in 1957 of the Comités International pour le Française, Langue Européenne (CIFLE) which was, interestingly, sponsored in part by some francophone African leaders like Mobide Keita and, inevitably, Léopold Senghor. The chief inspirer of the Comités was Hervé Lavenir, the prominent and prolific linguistic expansionist already cited. As the Secretary-General of the Comités, he prophesied in 1967 that as Europe unified, French would become the c o m m o n language, one to be taught to all Europeans as their first foreign language except, of course, in the francophone states (Francophonie '68 1969, pp. 36-7). His arguments in favor of French included the following: French was the language of three of the present members of the C o m m o n Market even though francophones were not in a majority, and French was a major foreign language taught in Germany, in Italy, and in Holland. It would be unwise to adopt the language of Europe's leading 36

Legally, the four languages of the present C o m m o n Market states were co-equal. A light touch to the linguistic rivalry between France and England was provided by the dispute over the adoption for the ending of the name of the jointly produced supersonic Concorde of what British manufacturers call the "French e " (Sampson 1968, p. 155).

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Waning and Resurgence

economic rival and absurd, he said, to sacrifice identity by " . . . opening the d o o r to the Américanisation of Europe". He added that France stood uniquely in between the other European countries, with many cultural links with the other states, and with a language and a culture more universal in its nature and values than any other. And he saw encouraging signs of the different European states realizing the importance of French in their curricula (even in Scandinavia) as a way of protecting their European identity f r o m the United States. A final argument Lavenir proffered for making French the vehicular language of Europe was the close links Europe had with Africa where French was, albeit along with English, the leading language of instruction, administration and business, and where most of the new states n o w associated with the C o m m o n Market were francophone. 3 7 Many eminent Europeans defended the use of French as the functional language of E u r o p e for reasons similar to Lavenir's (Boly 1971, pp. 33-5). A m o n g these were Dr. Franz-Josef, minister-president of the Saar who praised the elegance and subtlety of the language; Ferdinand Friedensburg, president of the German Institute of Economic Research and parliamentarian w h o argued the greater "psychological accessibility" of French over other languages for Europeans; Dr. Gustav René Hocke, member of the Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung w h o dismissed the rival of French, English, as "extra-European" in character; Gérard Abele, vice-president of the Comité Néerlandais pour le Français, Langue Européenne w h o insisted that French was less "imperialist than is anglo-American" and so a more favorable bridge to the Third World; Erik Roels, secretary-general of the Vlaams Komitee voor het Frans als Europese Voertaal, w h o argued that French was a language of culture rather than "uniquely of gadgets, science-fiction, sex and money"; and Armando Zanetti, director of L'Opinion Européenne (Rome) w h o observed that at European conferences earphones were put aside when a speech was delivered in French, that everyone was able to "discuss and even quibble (chicaner) in French". Such opinions, ranging from neurotic to persuasive, continued to make the European scene a battlefield even after the entry of England into the C o m m o n Market. In the long run, convenience and pragmatism would most probably tell, but it was difficult to prophesy with what result. 37

Lavenir w a s also active as leader of a l o b b y - the Comité pour la Capitale Européenne - that pressures to h a v e Paris absorb the p a n - E u r o p e a n organization of Brussels and Strasbourg t o b e c o m e the capital of Europe. See James G o l d s b o r o u g h , " A Pitch for Paris", International Herald Tribune, April 1, 1971.

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When England entered the C o m m o n Market at midnight on January 1, 1973, the stage for the competition in Europe between French and English was set. Amusingly, only two weeks later, the French government with the support of the French Academy sought to strengthen French as a language of modern technology by making it mandatory in government dealings to use 350 French expressions in place of the currently used English equivalents. Among the terms to be banned were "flashback" (to be replaced by rétrospectif), "one-man show" (to be replaced by spectacle solo), "zoning" (to be replaced by zonage) and "tanker" (to be replaced by navire cíteme). To its possible chagrin the commission for language reform seemed to have found no equivalents for terms such as hardware, software, or marketing. 38 In language, as well as elsewhere le défi americain remained. 39 While in Europe by the end of World War I there was no question but that French had ceased to be an intrinsic dimension of the identity of most countries, this was not so of territories outside Europe in which France still held political sway. France's political presence, however, was to wane and following World War II to collapse in many of these areas, first in the Middle East, and then in Asia. The French language continued to be of great importance in Lebanon by 1975, but elsewhere in the Middle East, Arabic had clearly become the language of identity of the educated, as it continued to be of the masses. When France established her mandates over Syria and Lebanon after World War I, for many French nationalists France had now reasserted "historic rights" dating back to the Crusades and involving long-lasting religious, commerical and educational links with the Levant. The French 38

The International Herald Tribune, January 18,1973. The new proposals were prepared by a commission on terminology established in 1970. The mandatory terms were published in the Journal Officiel, January 18, 1973. 39 In t w o articles in Le Monde, April 4, 1975, Cellard accused the French government of recklessly favoring English as virtually the only second language for lycée students by failing to make alternatives available. By so doing, France was forgeiting reciprocity on the part of other non-anglo-saxon Europeans who now were proving increasingly reluctant to offer French as a second language for their own students. This was beginning to happen in Holland, he insisted, and in Italy in 1972-1973, 56 percent of the students studying a second language picked English to only 36 percent in 1960-1961. French, as second language, had declined f r o m 59 percent to 39 percent during the same period. In France 82.44 percent of the students who opted for a second language picked English now, and the tendency was to consider oneself "civilized" only if one knew some English, as in 1925 one had been considered "civilized" only if one knew how to read. Willy Brandt stated on his visit to the United States in 1975 that English was becoming the "dominant second language of all European peoples" (cited by Reston in The International Herald Tribune, March 31, 1975).

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presence had long served as protection to many o f the plethora o f religious minorities and, o f course, through her many schools France had long been true, in the area, to her mission civilisatrice. O f proponents o f this mission General Georges Catroux once wrote "[they believed]. . . that the indigenous leaders, who would later provide the nucleus o f a government, should be shaped by the mould o f French culture because of its indisputable superiority and universality". 40 And on the eve o f World War I, Maurice Barrés, the prominent rightist author, could boast: In the Orient, we represent spirituality, justice, the category of the ideal. England is strong, Germany all-powerful, but we possess the souls. The Christians of the Orient are grouped around our priests, and the cultivated Turks come out of our schools (1923, p. 181).41 T h e French cultural presence in " S y r i a " in 1914, mainly maintained by religious orders given support by a government otherwise anti-clerical at home, was represented by the Jesuits who had founded, among many other schools, St. Joseph University in Beirut in 1875 (in 1913 the Schools o f Law and Engineering were added to those o f Theology, Medicine, Pharmacy, Dentistry and Midwifery). Also running schools (mainly French) were the Franciscans, the Lazarists, the Carmelites, the Capuchins, the Franciscan Sisters, and several other orders. O n the eve o f the mandate perhaps 90,000 students attended schools in " S y r i a " (other than elementary religious schools) and o f these 50,000 were studying in French or French-aided mission schools and colleges (Longrigg 1958, pp. 43-4). 4 2 B u t France was really popular only among the Maronites and the Greek Catholics — to the rival Greek Orthodox, to the Druze as well as to the majority Sunnites, she was suspect. After the war, with the break-up o f the Ottoman Empire, in spite of evidence that France's political protection as 40 Quoted in George Kirk, The Middle East in the War 1939-1946. Survey o f International Affairs (London, 1952), p. 305, fn. 1. Indications o f the important influence of France since the seventeenth century among the Christians of "Syria" appear in Haddad (1970). 41 For similar boasts and pretensions see the essays by prominent Frenchmen like General Weygand and Gabriel Hanotaux in Comité Colonial Français (1929); Robert de Caix in League of Nations (1929, pp. 59-60); and Puaux (1952, p. 99). Puaux stated that the highest justification for the French mandates was the fact that through French education the élites o f the area were united culturally and linguistically. T w o leading authorities agreed that the French regarded their mandates as indefinite, the term "mandate" merely being a concession to the United States. See Hourani (1946, p. 153) and Longrigg (1958, pp. 366-7). 42 By "Syria" was meant the Levant in general, which included the area now consisting o f the states of Lebanon and Syria. Also included in the broader use of the term were Palestine and Jordan.

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mandatory was not wanted, Syria became a separate French mandatory state and sacrificed to the enlarged mandatory state of Lebanon places such as Tripoli, Beirut and the Biqa'a valley. Needless to say, the suspicion was not ill-founded that France, sensitive to the great sympathy she enjoyed among the Maronites of Lebanon, favored as large a Lebanon as was compatible with maintaining a balance in favor of their preferred clients. During the mandatory period, the French did all they could to reinforce their cultural presence; French, made an official mandatory language, was taught in almost all schools, and the teaching of Arabic was generally discouraged.43 As far as education was concerned, Lebanon was relatively quite advanced - particularly in Christian Lebanon. Literacy among men was 40 percent and among women 20 percent. In Lebanon, 1,867 elementary schools educated 131,512 students, in Syria 1,123 educated 121,971 students. On a secondary school level, 104 schools educated 9,803 students in Lebanon; in Syria 48 schools educated 8,041 students; and in higher education, Lebanon, with 28 schools, educated 1,228 students while Syria, with 5 schools, educated 356 students. About 31 percent of the students in both areas attended official schools; 49 percent attended private schools (religious and secular) and 20 percent attended foreign schools. Among those who attended private schools a not insignificant proportion attended 43

See Hourani (1946, pp. 93-4). Although more dated than Longrigg, Hourani's book is more penetrating on matters cultural. Hourani waxed quite bitter over the French cultural imposition, observing that all top government posts were reserved for French-educated Lebanese and Syrians and that St. Joseph, a French Jesuit University linked to the University of Lyon, consciously inculcated francophilia and a distrust of Arab nationalism (pp. 83-4). But he admitted that French schools provided the finest education in the area. It should be observed that not all French administrators of the mandate were rigidly hostile to Arabic culture. Georges Catroux, for example, at the start of the mandate when he was on General Gouraud's staff, dissuaded the French government (at the instigation of the rector of St. Joseph, Père Chanteur) from closing down the University of Damascus which used Arabic as the language of introduction (even in medicine). This university had been established in embryo by the Ottoman government with a school of medicine and a school of law. Catroux, furthermore, encouraged the university and helped to provide it with French doctors. Upon returning to Damascus in 1926, he found that the students of the medical school had not joined the abortive rebellion against France, while students of the school of law had. He attributed this to the fact that the French government had provided the medical school with French teachers but had failed to do the same for the school of law. See Catroux (1949, p. 199; and 1958, pp. 60-4). Catroux argued that it hardly befitted the leading exponent of the civilizing mission to start its reign in Syria by closing down the only existing university. Tibawi (1969, p. 361), writing from a nationalist revisionist point of view, stated that the British in Palestine had provided more education than the French with about 50,000 pupils in school to about 12,000 in Syria. While highly critical of French cultural efforts, he had high praise for the Service des Antiquités and the Institut Français.

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English language schools - for example, Aleppo College, which was founded in 1876 in Gaziantep and moved to Syria during World War I, and the American University of Beirut, founded 1866, with its large secondary school, International College. But it is important to note that the authorities of the American University felt it commodious to offer a French education to many students in its "section secondaire", staffed by French teachers, during the Mandate period. Although in a new form, the French section of International College survived to 1975, three decades after independence. The French in Syria and Lebanon were eminently successful in "frenchifying" linguistically, and even on the level of personal tastes and mannerisms, the élite that attended its schools. This was in contrast to the Arabs attending American and British schools who generally never learned English perfectly but, on the other hand, maintained closer links with Arab culture and language. 44 This observation remained true even to 1975 - one was struck, for example, on the campus of the American University of Beirut, at how clusters of French educated students of the area tended to speak together in French, while their English language educated counterparts almost invariably spoke Arabic together, especially in the heat of demonstrations. T o Arab nationalists of the Levant, the French cultural policy was anathema, and roundly denounced as "imperialistic". Thus Sati' al-Husri an important leader of the Arab Awakening and a leading advocate of education reform even after independence denounced the "slavish imitation of the French system" of education in Syria and Lebanon whose purpose could only be to assure the dominance of the French language and culture. He observed that the French had tried to guarantee their cultural presence before leaving the area, but in vain; now, he implied, the native

44

Atiyah (1946) confirmed this observation in the case of Egypt. Random notations in my private journal kept over the years I have spent in Lebanon include the following: a Frencheducated poet stated he found it boring to read anything in Arabic, he found the style rigid and bombastic; two political science students at the American University of Beirut said French education changed a student's identity to French, anglo-saxon education left it confused; a professor at the Lebanese University (1961) figured 45 percent of the lectures were in French, 55 percent in Arabic; a French-educated lady told that she was ashamed to be unable to read Arabic easily but then she had no urge to do so; a French-educated Palestinian girl seeing a map of France m'my office said that they (her teachers) "taught us to love France and hate our own country". For a consideration of the guilt over their weakness in Arabic of many foreign-educated Arabs, see Laura Nader, "A Note on Attitudes and the Use of Language" in Fishman ed. (1968, pp. 276-81).

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governments were themselves providing this guarantee ironically after they had become free. 45 The French cultural presence, seen as a guarantee of the continuing political presence of France, was then formidable, but its very success helped to blind many Frenchmen to the fact that in an age of developing nationalism in the Third World the pretensions of Western imperialism were about to come to an end. As Pierre Rondot said: F o r a l o n g t i m e w e i g n o r e d A r a b n a t i o n a l i s m . A s it w a s o f t e n the e x p r e s s i o n o f y o u n g l a w y e r s and publicists, t h e p r o d u c t o f o u r s c h o o l s , w e t e n d e d t o regard it as a p u r e v e r b a l e x e r c i s e . . . T h e p o w e r f u l e c h o that n a t i o n a l i s m w a s t o f i n d in the m a s s e s , t h a n k s i n particular t o t h e i n t e r p é n é t r a t i o n o f A r a b and M o s l e m s e n t i m e n t , w a s n o t s u f f i c i e n t l y felt, o r at least w a s n o t a p p r e c i a t e d at its p r o p e r v a l u e , i n F r e n c h a d m i n i s t r a t i v e circles. T h e m e n in t h o s e o f f i c e s , h o w e v e r b e n e v o l e n t , t e n d e d t o c o n t r a s t the d r e a m s o f t h e i n t e l l e c t u a l s w i t h the p o s i t i v e p r e o c c u p a t i o n s o f c u l t i v a t o r s and traders. T h e y d i d n o t i m a g i n e w h a t their e f f e c t w o u l d b e o n the s u b c o n s c i o u s e m o t i o n a l l e v e l . . . ( Q u o t e d in K i r k 1952, p. 305).

Egypt was a different case. In spite of her many ties to Egypt, and after strong diplomatic opposition to Britain's political presence in Egypt after 1882, France in 1904 recognized, however reluctantly, that the land Napoleon had once "liberated" from the Mamlukes now came under another's political control. But on a cultural level the close ties persisted and French even more than English has been the language of the Egyptian élite almost to this day. 46 The turning point might be said to have been 1952, the year of Nasser's revolt against the old regime. The French cultural presence in Egypt may be said to have started when Napoleon landed in 1798, and after him it continued through the missions of young officers Muhammad Ali sent to study in France. In 1844 the first French Catholic mission schools were opened in Egypt and in 1891 the important École Française de Droit was established in Cairo. Even after 45

See al-Husri (1949). For m a n y denunciations of French cultural " i m p e r i a l i s m " during the M a n d a t e period see various nationalist submissions to the P e r m a n e n t M a n d a t e s C o m m i s s i o n included in the Proceedings (League of N a t i o n s 1929). O n al-Husri see Cleveland (1971). A l - H u s r i was convinced that the heart of Arab nationalism w a s classical Arabic; he d r e w inspiration f r o m the w o r k s o f Fichte and H e r d e r (pp. 99-100, 181-2). 46

French survived t h e British occupation of 1882 and until a r o u n d 1936 remained the official language of c o m m u n i c a t i o n b e t w e e n the British and the Egyptians. T o y n b e e (1934-1961, vol. V, p. 505, fn. 1) tells of an incident on N o v e m b e r 23, 1924 w h e n t h e British H i g h C o m m i s s i o n e r , Lord Allenby, presented an u l t i m a t u m to the Egyptian P r i m e Minister, Zaghlul Pasha, over t h e assassination of the Sirdar, Sir Lee Stack, in English. English was apparently chosen deliberately to m a r k England's e x t r e m e displeasure - French w o u l d have been the n o r m a l language. B u t , T o y n b e e indicated, official copies of the u l t i m a t u m in French w e r e deposited t o m a k e the m e a n i n g quite clear.

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1900, when the British suppressed the teaching of French in the official primary schools (and in 1904 in secondary schools), it was the principal language used in the Council of Ministers and by the cosmopolitan élites of Alexandria and Cairo. Continuity for French, outside the official schools, was provided by French missionary schools, two lycées founded on the eve of World War I by the Mission Laique, as well as the schools of t h e Alliance

Française

a n d t h e Alliance

Isréalite.

A s l a t e as 1 9 4 3 t h e l a r g e s t

contingent of foreign teachers working in Egypt was the French with 2,164, to 593 British and 569 Americans. 47 With the onset of World War II, however, the death-knell of the French political presence was to strike, and so also its cultural presence was to be severely tested and, finally, in Syria and Egypt to be virtually eliminated following the outbreak of the disastrous Algerian Revolution in 1954 and then the invasion of Egypt by France in 1956 in alliance with Britain and Israel. Lebanon, as will be seen, proved to be an exception. The unwinding of the French regime in the Levant began when the government of the Popular Front, in 1936, sought to come to terms with Arab nationalists by offering treaties of independence with strong guarantees for French interests. These treaties proved abortive as they were never ratified in Paris. In the first years of World War II, Gabriel Puaux, among others, tried to preserve the situation for Vichy France, but in vain - even if the High Commissioner did decide ". . . to forget the teachings of the Discourse on Method . . . " and to rely upon the reasons of the heart, much better understood, according to him, by Orientals (Puaux 1952, pp. 7-8). As Albert Hourani put it: "In 1939 there were more w h o spoke French than there had been in 1918, but perhaps fewer who loved or believed in France" (ibid., p. 153). When the British and the Free French invaded the Levant in 1941 it was clear to General de Gaulle that Arab nationalist feelings would have to be assuaged. His government decided upon one more attempt to provide independence with strong guarantees — an attempt that might have had some hope of success had the execution of policy not been so clumsy and then brutal. General Catroux, de Gaulle's representative, arrived in the Levant in 1941 to find France's position in a sad state indeed: " M y mission was a heavy and hazardous one . . ." he discovered: T h e political and psychological conjuncture was bad. T h e scope o f action was limited. We had to raise f r o m the ruins, to reanimate in the population a confidence 47 Mathews and Akrawi (1949, p. 38). Material on the French presence also appears in Alliance Française (1923). These are the proceedings of a congress held in Marseilles in 1922.

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the defeat and the Vichy regime had destroyed. We had to fashion, with a Syria and a Lebanon become independent and divorced morally from us, a permanent bond with France . . . (Catroux 1949, p. 199).

Generally members of the Catholic missions as well as French residents proved uncooperative and even hostile, the most extreme case being the Jesuit Father Père Chanteur w h o encouraged his students to say public prayers for Pétain. As for Arab nationalism, Catroux's conclusions were that even though Lebanon would follow the political lead of Syria, France was still strong in Lebanon, a "diversified checkerboard" of competing sectarian groups. Lebanon "remained an artificial construct of our policy", a land where nationalism had not planted deep roots. But in Syria xenophobic nationalism was a powerful and active force; it was PanArabist and with British encouragement, according to Catroux, "bent upon the expulsion of the French". T h e policy he intended to follow, as he indicated to his commander, de Gaulle, was to play gingerly with PanArabism and use the fear of Zionism and of Turkey to encourage cooperation with France. After his relatively successful mission, Catroux departed and the chief authority in Lebanon became Jean Helleu. In October 1943, the Lebanese Prime Minister, Riad Solh, declared that the Constitution needed to be changed to provide for Lebanon's absolute sovereignty and the end of French as an official language. When a number of Lebanese leaders were arrested, the country united in protest. This was N o v e m b e r 11. Catroux returned to repair some of the damage done, release the leaders and attempt reconciliation, but he soon realized the French game was almost over. H e informed de Gaulle that " . . . they n o longer see in us the spiritual sons of the French Revolution. This is the reproach I am confronted with by visitors and in letters addressed to m e . " The decision of N o v e m b e r 11, he realized sadly, had been taken by officials w h o feared that all was about to be lost. They wished to strike one last blow for French prestige. " W e n o w k n o w " , Catroux wrote, " w h o suffered the worst blow. It was neither General Spears, nor Riad Bey Solh." Catroux did what he could, but the situation deteriorated rapidly. The French increased their unpopularity by b o m b i n g Damascus once again (the first time had been in 1925) and, finally, under British and American pressure, the French withdrew their troops and abandoned Lebanon and Syria to complete sovereignty. 4 8 4 « See Catroux (1949, pp. 219-20, 336-7, 426) and also Kirk (1952, pp. 106-15), for the sad and confused story of the final eviction of the French.

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If the French were meeting with keen resistance in Lebanon, even f r o m Christians, one can imagine the opposition to their presence in mainly Muslim Syria. Here resistance was not only political but even involved, during 1943—1945, a sort of cultural revolution against France, a " R e f o r m a t i o n " in a sense. Following the plans prepared by Sati' al-Husri, at the time the leading figure of the Pan-Arabist m o v e m e n t in the field of language and culture, the Syrian government legislated that n o foreign language be taught in public primary schools and that the foreign language selected b y secondary school students be optional. After the b o m b a r d m e n t of Damascus in M a y 1945, all French schools were closed and only allowed to open again after they had agreed to adjust their curricula to the national system. Thus, in one fell blow, French was eliminated as the most important of the t w o "official" languages of Syria, and this definitively. T h e Algerian and then more particularly, the Suez affair completed the passing of France in Syria w h e n the schools of the Mission Laique was nationalized. O f course the French implantation had been too great for there not to be a significant continuity, albeit a diminishing one. Constantine Zurayk, one time president of Damascus University, even as late as 1960 observed to the author that the Ministry of Education was still dominated by Frencheducated men, the Syrian educational system still modelled on the French system. Sati' al-Husri himself had been French-educated - he did not really learn Arabic until he was an adult - and thought and breathed the French system. But now, of course, h o w e v e r similar to the French system Syria's was, it became linguistically Arabic. In the case of Egypt the turning point was 1956 when the tragic last gasp of Western imperialism in the " g u n - b o a t " tradition occurred. B o t h British and French schools were seized with the intention of "Egyptianizing" t h e m and the five French lycées (with 7,450 students) were nationalized. Also victims of Western short-sightedness as well, of course, victims of Nasserist social nationalism, w e r e the largely French-speaking " w h i t e " Egyptians, the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of Cairo and Alexandria p o r trayed just before their diaspora b y Lawrence Durrell in The Alexandria Quartet. In the Beirut to which some of the class migrated, one was impressed by h o w much they sounded, when reminiscing, like " w h i t e s " of an earlier revolution. In 1975, while one could get by k n o w i n g only French in Lebanon, one could not do so in Cairo as in the past. As an epitaph to the fall of the French cultural presence in Egypt, one m i g h t quote, ironically, the lament of t w o patriotic French journalists:

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The day will come when Egypt will have to make new calculations. It may then seem that the imperialism of France was not so costly. Without ever imposing public control we installed a waterway through the desert which made her a great power. We rediscovered for Egypt her history and the writings of her forefathers; we filled her museums, and all it cost her was an obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. We dug her canals and multiplied her harvests. We taught her students in our schools at our own expense; our nuns tended her sick. Why should so many services rendered, so many bonds of spirit and affection forged, make an Egyptian preach hatred against us in North Africa?49

Once the Algerian war was liquidated, however, France had the opportunity, seized by General de Gaulle, and maintained by his successors Presidents Pompidou and Giscard d'Estaing, of regaining the friendship of the Arabs and perhaps of so promoting France's cultural influence once again. This effort the French government made deliberately for reasons of strategy, geographical propinquity (especially to N o r t h Africa), and because of her dependence upon Arab oil supplies, and often in the face of popular prejudices in favor of Israel and against the Arabs (see Balta and Rulleau 1973). General de Gaulle as early as World War II had sensed the winds of change, the inevitability of self-determination in the Third World. H e had the "lucidity of necessity" according to one commentator, to place French interests before her prejudices, even his o w n (op. cit., p. 46). In 1967, for example, he favored the Arabs over Israel. Pompidou continued this policy through 1973, a policy sustained by hard facts: by 1970 France exported 440 million francs to Israel and imported 196 million f r o m her, while she exported 7,639.60 million francs to the Arab states and imported 11,065.95 million francs f r o m them. And 80 percent of France's needs in hydrocarbons were supplied f r o m Arab sources (ibid., pp. 65-6). While France's cultural position in Lebanon was relatively secure, in Syria and Egypt, where her earlier political behavior had been so prejudicial, France could only hope at best to make minor gains. The Arabism of the Syrian Ba'th party, the strong Arabist orientation that Nasser gave 49

Bromberger and Bromberger (1957, pp. 188-9). The authors, as many other French observers, assumed Nasser was behind the Algerian Revolution of 1954. One answer to the question the Brombergers ask is that of Hourani (1953), who observed that in the past a dominant power had often " . . . been the carrier of a universal idea or culture; it has given the best of itself to those it has conquered, and by so doing has created a universal world in which the original difference between conqueror and conquered has been forgotten. Rome created a universal world, and so did China; but the West has not given the best of itself to the Middle East in its period of domination. What the Arab peoples have received from the West has not been enough to create, in any real sense, a community between them and it. They are still outside it, and it is still alien to them" (p. 31).

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Egypt, as well as the extent to which arabization had been pushed in the academic systems of both countries, made any return to the past inconceivable. With regard to the French presence in Syria, Jean Penard, in 1964 t h e Conseiller

Culturel

et de Coopération

Technique

t o Syria, o b s e r v e d in

Culture Française that the cultural centers of Aleppo and Damascus and the Franco-Arab lycée of Aleppo had been closed for good even if diplomatic relations had been resumed in 1962 (1964,1 : pp. 38-9). This meant, he said, the loss of half a generation of young Syrians now at the University with no knowledge of French. English in Syria, he found was well ahead: three out of four students in secondary school picked it as their first foreign language over French. Those over forty knew French, those over thirty knew both French and English and the 20-30 year olds only English. 50 Nevertheless, still in existence were the Lycée Franco-Arabe de Damas and a number of bilingual schools educating some 25,000 students. T w o religiously run hospitals still functioned in Damascus and Aleppo as did t h e prestigious Institut Français d'Études Arabe de Damas,

the center o f a

great deal of important scholarly work including publication of the monographs of its famous former director Henri Laoust. The director in 1975 was André Raymond. As for Egypt in 1969, while the five lycées of the Mission Laique remained nationalized, about 60 religious establishments educated 33,000 students in French and 110 French professors served in the Egyptian system; 1,800 people subscribed to the cultural center of Cairo, and five hours a day over the national radio and six hours a week on television were in French (Balous 1970, pp. 156-7). The Egyptian Ambassador, Adel Moneim El Nagar, declared in 1968 that French had returned as a cultural presence. He observed that 150 lay and religious schools educated 60,000 students, all the universities had chairs in French literature, the Institut d'Archéologie in Cairo was active, and on March 19 the two countries signed a cultural treaty to assure cooperation. 51 He referred to all this as a return to the 50

Paul Balta in Le Monde (March 3, 1971) indicated that in 1968-1969 of the 53,700 Syrian students in secondary school, 80.3 percent picked English as their second language and only 18.4 percent French - the remainder opted for German. But Balta did indicate that various economic and cultural indices revealed a growing, although modest, rapprochement between Syria and France. In 1970, for example, a cultural agreement provided for 40 French experts and professors to be sent to Syria, and Syria increased the number of her students studying in Paris. 51 "La Culture française, lien traditional depuis le retour d'Égypte" in Culture Française 1968, 4, pp. 7-21. Some important Egyptian journals were still published in French, for example, Le Progrès Égyptien, Le Journal du Canal and La Bourse Égyptienne.

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traditional cultural friendship between the two countries dating back to Champollion and to the construction of the Suez Canal. By the end of 1970, France's position in Egypt had improved even more (Le Monde, December 16, 1970). Next to Russia, France was Egypt's leading supplier of goods (11 percent), and prospects seemed good for an even greater amount of business with the establishment of close banking relations through the new Banque Franco-Arabe d'Investissement (FrabB a n k ) , t h e Union des Banques Arabes et Française ( U B A F ) , a n d a n e w j o i n t

institute for oil. The number of registered members of the French cultural center in Cairo had increased to 2,000 and the number of exchange professors and scholarships was also increasing. Thus, while the cultural hold that France had over Egypt in the Alexandrian days of yesteryear was over, through its balanced and intelligent policy in regard to the Arabs, and the Third World more generally, Gaullist France reaped some important rewards in countries like Syria and Egypt. This was the theme of three visitors to Paris in 1972, Saddam Hussein (vice-president of Iraq's revolutionary council), Mourad Ghaleb (Egypt's foreign minister), and President Bourguiba of Tunisia. In June of this year, when Iraq nationalized some fields of the Iraq Petroleum C o m pany (I.P.C.), it guaranteed France's special rights for a ten-year period. France's sympathetic stance towards the Arabs then continued to reap dividends through 1975. Valuable contracts were made with many Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Kuwait involving industrial items from military supplies to color television systems and including cooperation in developing Arab electronic and nuclear equipment. By the end of 1974 it was estimated that over a period of only six months French exports to the oil producing states had doubled. This was to a large extent the fruit of official visits by Michel Jobert in January 1974, and ofjacques Chirac, French Prime Minister, to the Arab world and to Iran, and of Foreign Minister Sauvagnargues to Egypt, in December 1974. Before considering other parts of the world, a word should be said about the present status of French in two non-Arab countries in the Middle East with which France had had cultural ties dating far back, Turkey and Iran. In Turkey since World War II, French, once the most important foreign language of Istanbul's élite, had become a language of relatively minor and modest importance (see Marin, "La Turquie et la France" in Culture Française 1964, 1: pp. 20-7). The American presence was massive and English was the language of the Middle East Technical University of Ankara, as well as of Robert College (now the Turkish-run University of

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the Bosphorus). M o r e important, of course, than any English competition was the nationalistic effort of Turkification inaugurated by Kamal Ataturk. In most of Turkey the visitor felt himself to be in a m u c h m o r e hermetic and monolingual ambiance than was the case in Lebanon, or even Syria. Nevertheless French was still taught at the famous lycée of Galatasaray and in seven religious high schools under Turkish status. In all about forty French teachers help to educate about 5,000 students u p to the equivalent of the French baccalauréat and about four thousand people subscribed to cultural centers in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir. In Iran, French, once the major foreign language, was n o w spoken by a relatively small élite (Balous 1970, pp. 155-7). 52 After 1961, in particular, because of the American military presence and because English was the language of oil, French was n o longer taught in the official schools except in t w o national lycées where it was experimental. French was taught in schools of the Alliance Israélite (about 4,000 students), missionary schools, schools of the Mission Laique (the most important, the Lycée Razi, had 1,200 students), and the Collège Saint-Louis run by the Lazarites which had trained m a n y prominent Iranians. A b o u t ninety French professors served in Iran, and France provided technical cooperation scholarships. I m p o r tant also was the Institut Franco-Iranien de Recherches (founded 1967) and run by the eminent Islamic scholar Henri Corbin. In December 1974, Prime Minister Chirac visited Iran to negotiate far-reaching contracts that, if concluded, w o u l d make France Iran's chief foreign supplier (she was fourth this year). T h e s u m of these contracts, involving aid in the nuclear field to the installation of France's color television system, would be 50 million francs. 5 3 In conclusion, in the Middle East French was on the whole only a tool — one that in most cases was felt to be less valuable than English by Arabs, T u r k s , and Iranians. But as the m e m o r y of French imperialism faded, and since France's positive approach to the Third World in general and rather pro-Arab stand in regard to Israel, in particular, there were indications that French still had a significant role to play in the Middle East, but outside Lebanon — to be treated more fully in a later chapter - French was n o longer 52

According to a report m Le Monde, October 10-11, 1971, the Iranian government seemed to be persuaded that exposure to German "technology" was more important for its students than exposure to French "culture". In 1971,4,000 Iranian students were studying in Germany and only 700" in France. 53 Le Monde, December 25, 1974. Total French contracts with oil-producing states, it was hoped, would produce 15 billion francs a year, which would be equal to one hundred days of oil imports, four weeks of total French production.

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of intrinsic importance as a dimension of national identity. In 1975 this also appeared to be the fate of French in Asia. O n c e an important contender for India, in the eighteenth century, and master of thousands of islands and sizable continental territory in IndoChina, France by 1954 had ceased to be an important political presence in Asia, and it seemed apparent that her cultural presence, with the t r i u m p h of f o r m s of nationalistic and populist c o m m u n i s m , would soon end. T h e subject of France's presence in Asia is discussed here briefly only to recall a time, nostalgic to many Frenchmen, when the French presence was of considerable importance to the identities of many Asians. French, of course, still remained a language of education and of discourse in IndoChina, but the winds of change seemed, after the battle of Dien Bien Phu, irresistible. T h e French presence in Asia and Oceania after World War II was relatively small but geographically quite widespread. 5 4 It was still strong in ex-French Indo-China; a m o n g the some 130 islands France ruled as "territories" all over the Pacific, of which N e w Caledonia and dependencies (with a population of about 90,000) was the largest, and Tahiti the second largest (with a population of26,000); and in the five city enclaves of India which were annexed to the independent state of India. Caledonia was the most " e v o l v e d " of the islands with almost 100 percent literacy, Tahiti and the other Polynesian islands combined (with a population of about 85,000 people) had 120 French schools a m o n g them. 5 5 T h e enclave cities in India kept French as an official language and French continued to be taught in primary school classes and in several lycées.. In Pondicherry, which N e h r u once politely referred to as India's w i n d o w u p o n France, an Institute existed which did important research into Indian civilization. But, of course, in the massive state of India, this French presence was minimal — Pondicherry and environs included only about 374,000 people, and the next largest were Chandernagor with a population of about 44,000 and Karikal with a population of 23,000 (the other t w o enclaves were Mahé and Yanaon). Elsewhere, in areas the British once ruled, the French had made minor cultural penetrations. For example, since Singapore, whose language of 54

A measure of how relatively small the French presence was in Asia was the fact, according to Burney (1962, p. 49), that of the books France exported in 1961 only 6 percent went to Asia and Oceania. 55 The islands of the New Hebrides, off Australia, were still in 1975 ruled jointly by France and Great Britain. The population of these islands was about 80,000.

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culture remained English, became independent f r o m Malaysia in 1965, the main foreign languages studied were French, Japanese and German (rather than, as previously under Malaysian rule, Chinese, English and Tamil; Guillemin et al., "L'Enseignement de Français à Singapour" in Culture Française 1968, 4: pp. 22-8). Students studied French in Singapore in greater n u m b e r s than either Japanese or German but it should be noted that half of this n u m b e r consisted of resident British subjects. There was an active branch of the Alliance in Singapore staffed by six professors and teaching French to around 600 students. T h o s e w h o have seen the film Hiroshima mon amour may have been surprised to find that there is a French presence in Japan. For some particular reason of an aesthetic and psychological order there had been an unusual interest in Japan for things French, at least ever since the founding, in 1924, of the Maison Franco-Japonaise by n o less a figure than Paul Claudel, then ambassador to Japan (Balous 1970, pp. 168-9). But this French linguistic presence was of very minor importance compared to that of English. In secondary school, 99.5 percent of the students studied English in 1961; in higher education, where a foreign language was obligatory, only one out of five picked French. T h e n u m b e r of Japanese teachers of French, in 1962, was about 1,000 to 55,825 teaching English (Esprit 1962, pp. 739-44, Angles, " A u Japon"). But French theater groups were still popular and it was still chic for many cafés to adopt French names. Significant cultural and intellectual centers, other than the Maison Franco-Japonaise in T o k y o , were the Athénée Français of T o k y o and t w o institutes in K y o t o and Osaka. Each of these four offered French courses to about 2,000-3,000 students a year. France offered a n u m b e r of scholarships to Japanese students to study in France. T h e crucial areas of France's linguistic presence in Asia were N o r t h and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. All the four states were involved in the chaos of the war of Vietnam and all but N o r t h Vietnam were heavily, if only temporarily and artificially, under the influence of the Americans until 1975. It was impossible to say what the future held in store, or even what the immediate situation really was, in regard to the French cultural presence. But in 1966 the following was one estimate: 5 6 In C a m b o d i a (population of6,250,000) French was obligatory in primary school and the language of most later studies — there were 364 French professors in the 56 Francophonie '68 (1969). O n French nostalgia o v e r ex-French Indo-China, see Bernard Clergerie, "Essai de perspective pour l'ancienne I n d o c h i n e " in Esprit (1962, pp. 723-36); Viatte (1969, pp. 143-61); and Balous (1970, pp. 127-32).

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country and 91 technical assistants, the national languages were French and Khmer; in Laos (population of 2,060,000) French was virtually the exclusive language in secondary school and of higher studies - there were 275 French professors teaching, and 88 technical assistants serving in the country, French and Laotian were both national languages; in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (population of 20,000,000) French was understood by some hundred thousands, but the national language was Vietnamese (with a missionary-introduced latinate alphabet); in the Republic of Vietnam (population of 17,000,000) about 1,500,000 spoke French except for some French run schools, French was no longer the language of primary school, in secondary school 56 percent of the students opted for it as their second language (over English or Chinese) - 358 French professors served in the country, the national language was Vietnamese. In 1965 Seymour Topping of the New York Times (May 27), while finding the French influence declining, observed that French remained the second language in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and that many of the important families still sought French education for their children. In this same year 158 scholarship students from Cambodia, 122 from Laos and 123 from South Vietnam were studying in France. The French presence was strongest in Cambodia and many cultural centers and religious schools were still active. Prince Norodim Sihanouk, in stabler days for himself, described Cambodia as potentially France's "sanctuary" in Asia in spite of the penetration of Russian and English (Esprit 1962, pp. 737-8, "Témoignage sur le Cambodge"). He pointed out that he himself wrote in French and that the most important newspaper in Khmer (the Nationalist) published its daily editorial in French so that the world could know what the Cambodians (and he, in particular) thought. He praised the French language as "précis, souple, nuancé", and observed that since independence, with the increase of school enrolment, more Cambodians knew French than ever before. But with the start of the withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam in 1974 and the intensified pressure of the Khmer Rouges, Cambodia seemed vulnerable enough for the French colony to begin to evacuate the country, sensing the final end of their world (Sydney Schanberg, International Herald Tribune, March 2-3, 1974). Almost symbolically, on 18 January, a rocket was fired at the Lycée Descartes, the leading school for French students and members of Cambodia's élite. In Vietnam French became the predominant official language after Albert Sarrault had eliminated the traditional competition for civil service

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positions (1915-1919), but since the departure of the French, the establishment of Communist North Vietnam, and the entry of the United States so massively into South Vietnam, many among the younger generations know no French at all. Even in 1962 Bernard Clergerie estimated that only a tiny minority still knew French in North Vietnam and only about 10 to 12 percent did in South Vietnam. Perhaps France's chief contribution to Vietnam's sense of national identity had been - in the long view of history — to help to create it, negatively, among the élites who marched to victory in Saigon in 1975. The Provisional Revolutionary Government included three leaders, Nguyen Huu Tho, Tran Van Tra, and Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, all three of whom had been educated, as Newsweek put it, in "French-run Academies, universities, and jails . . ." (May 12, 1975). As Paul Mus and other students of Vietnam observed, and as events seemed to have confirmed, the revolt of the Vietnamese against the French and then the Americans was basically nationalistic, even if in the shape of international communism. The French, let alone the Americans, had never assimilated the masses qf the Vietnamese — their few successes were in the urban areas, never in the countryside where the masses lived and with which they identified. "Although the Vietnamese", wrote Paul Mus, "accepted the French into their countryside of traditional structures they were unable to alter the pattern of life in the direction of French ideas. Since the elements of French civilization and its perspectives on political life are chiefly urban they give a very faint idea of the inner cohesion of life close to the soil. . . The fields have provided the basis for a stable social structure, a discipline for work and a rhythm of communal celebrations - in short, a contract between the society itself, the soil, and the sky." (McAlister ed. 1973, p. 114). Only in the cities, Mus observed, did the French find support, and significantly those against the French in the cities withdrew to the countryside to resist, both physically and spiritually (see McAlister and Mus 1970, and Mus 1952). As to the future, culturally and probably politically, the South was likely to unite with the North, and in the course of time fulfill an identity, both culturally and linguistically, and the French language was most likely to remain as little more than a tool, like other languages, for diplomacy, for example. 57 Laos inevitably also became involved in the French and American struggles to keep Indo-China within the Western orbit. Until 1973 French 57

For a survey of recent events see Cady (1974).

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was the language of secondary school and of higher studies, and about 200,000 of the Laotians knew French. In 1973, however, to France's chagrin, Laos decided to adopt Lao instead of French as the principal language of education. Already, by this year, Lao had been used in several primary schools. T o these was to be added a secondary school system running parallel to the French which, to date, had held a monopoly through the lycée in Vientiane which alone bestowed secondary school diplomas. This new system enjoyed subsidies f r o m the American government. By the summer of 1975, however, the revolutionary Pathet Lao had seized the main centers of power, had pressured American missions into retreat, and Laos was going the way of Vietnam. O n the night of August 23,1975, a report to the New York Times stated: "Tonight the time allotted for the regular nightly broadcast in French by the Vientiane radio was pre-empted by a broadcast in the Lao language accompanied by background sounds of throngs cheering and singing as the announcement of the Pathet Lao take-over was made" (New York Times, August 24, 1975). Before ending this bird's eye view of the French presence in what was once France's proud Indo-Chinese empire, it might be noted that IndoChina had produced French-educated writers (who write in French) of some importance. Many of these writers - the Vietnamese Pham Quynh, for example - dealt often with the same theme as did their Black and N o r t h African counterparts, namely, that of alienation and deracination produced by assimilation to French culture. In Fire in the Lake, Fitzgerald characterized the French-educated Vietnamese as something of a rootless elite, cut off f r o m the village masses a m o n g w h o m French never penetrated and for w h o m Mediterranean individualism had never been accepted as a universal norm (Fitzgerald 1972, pp. 241, 244—5, 251). Whether indeed history had condemned the French presence in South East Asia or not remained to be seen, after the smoke of three decades of almost constant warfare had cleared. With the triumph of C o m m u n i s m in the spring and s u m m e r of 1975 in Cambodia, South Vietnam and probably Laos, it seemed probable that not only the French but the Western presence in general was to become a matter of the past. While the probable fate of the French language in Asia, or in the Middle East, offered little cause for optimism, in other parts of the world, Africa in particular, the French were heartened in 1960 when leaders of nations independent of her sway for only a short time chose the French language as their linguistic component of identity and in 1970 combined to consolidate

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and to confirm the French language as a universal language with the establishment of a "commonwealth" based upon this language, the Agence de Coopération. Francophone states began to work as something o f a bloc as early as 1945 during the establishment of the United Nations when they contributed to making French a working language of the United Nations. It was not until the early 1960's, however, after many new francophone states had entered the United Nations, that this grouping, now consisting o f around 30 states, was able to exert significant pressure when it worked in unison. B y 1965 many links had been formed between these francophone states, some of which have already been mentioned, and in this year (in November), during a visit to Dakar, President Bourguiba o f Tunisia first publicly launched the idea of a "Commonwealth à la française, a sort o f community which respects the sovereignty of each one and harmonizes the efforts of all". 58 This proposal was followed up by a number o f meetings o f African leaders. In March 1966 President Senghor o f Senegal gave his public support to Bourguiba's idea and in May o f that year the two met in Tunis to plan further. In June 1966, the heads of states of the Organisation Commune Africaine et Malgache (OCAM) meeting at Tananarive authorized President Diori Hamani of Niger to present the project to the French government. At this point, some doubts began to be expressed. Surprisingly, on the surface at least, the government of General de Gaulle was cool to the idea, even suspicious, and refused to commit itself. Several reasons for this reaction have been suggested. First, the General feared that any hasty support might smack o f "cultural neo-colonialism", especially among radical states like Algeria - France preferred to remain neutral to the idea until members of the Third World should institutionalize the idea of Francophonia on their own. As Jean de Broglie, former Secretary o f State to the Foreign Office and President o f the Association de Solidarité Francophone put it in November 1966, France regarded the idea with "sympathy and interest" but was obliged to refrain from any hasty action that might arouse hostile comments from those who wished for her ill.59 Second, a more cynical view has held that France feared a threat to her 58 The establishment of the Agence is discussed in Balous (1970, pp. 33-47); Le Monde, especially the issue ofjune 14-15,1970; issues oijeune Afrique-, and Alexandre (1969). The idea of such a "commonwealth" was perhaps first implied by Senghor in his article " L e Française, Langue du Culture" in Esprit (1962, pp. 837—M). The term "Francophonie" may have first been used by the French weekly Gavroche in 1964. Corbett (1972, p. 78) believes that the idea of the commonwealth first originated in Quebec in 1961 among Léger and his associates. 59

Le Nouvel Observateur,

September 2, 1966, p. 6. Broglie was later to insist France's

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predominance among French-speaking African states on the part of a wealthy state like Canada — this was allegedly the view of the Quai d'Orsay in particular which, in any case, preferred bilateral rather than multilateral links with its African wards (Le Monde, June 14—15, 1970). Whatever the real reason or reasons, General de Gaulle did not sanction the idea publicly until after his famous, or infamous, trip to Canada in July, when, upon the death of President Daniel Johnson (Premier of Quebec) he talked of a "perte pour la francophonie". After this, those who had feared a truncated "Franco-phonia without France" were reassured: France shed her reticence and entered forcefully into the making of the proto-commonwealth. The attitude of partly French-speaking European states was also one of caution. Brussels was perhaps suspicious of de Gaulle's possibly using the occasion of the establishment of a "commonwealth" to proclaim "Vive la Wallonie libre!" and hesitated to participate in the project until the second Niamey Conference. Switzerland, fearing perhaps that her "neutrality" might be compromised, or that participation might arouse language tensions domestically, remained aloof. In the Third World, several states showed suspicion; some, like Algeria, open hostility. President Ould Daddah of Mauritania rejected the idea of any "rigid framework", and President Sékou Touré of Guinea denounced the plan as "neo-colonialist"; Morocco and Mali were cool to the plan and abstained from making any commitment. But the architects of "Francophonia" proceeded with their efforts, even "without France", and despite the suspicions mentioned and the disappointment at the absence of Canada, Laos, Algeria, Morocco and even, ominously some felt, of Tunisia from the meeting of the Association des Parlementaires de Langue Française held in Luxembourg in the spring of 1967. In January 1968, the heads of state of the Organisation Commune Africaine et Malgache (OCAM) met in Niamey (Niger) and entrusted Diori Hamani with the task of following up efforts to institutionalize Francophonia. In February 1968, Gabon invited Quebec to participate in a meeting of French-speaking national ministers of education (which led to the temporary suspension of diplomatic relations between Ottawa and Libreville). Certain conferences were held.in anticipation. In December 1968, reticence was a case of "empirisme" not hostility (Le Monde, January 28, 1967). It might be noted that while still hesitant in regard to any "commonwealth" with dangerous political overtones, France did promote the specifically cultural Conseil International de la Langue Française, mentioned above, which was founded in May 1967.

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the first m e e t i n g t o o k place of the n e w Congrès de la Jeunesse Francophone, and, in J a n u a r y , 1969, a conference of the Ministers of E d u c a t i o n of O C A M t o o k place in Kinshasa (Mauritius at this point j o i n e d O C A M ) . Finally o n February 17, 1969, the first C o n f e r e n c e of N i a m e y of the f r a n c o p h o n e states opened a n d A n d r é Malraux, Minister of Culture, expressed France's full support. In the second N i a m e y C o n f e r e n c e o f 1970 the Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique des Pays Francophones w a s set u p ; t h e French " c o m m o n w e a l t h " had entered its first phase. M a n y had w o r k e d for the establishment of this nucleus of a " c o m m o n w e a l t h " — here are mentioned o n l y s o m e of the m o r e i m p o r t a n t architects. O b v i o u s l y the j o i n t fathers of the project, Senghor and B o u r g u i b a , take precedence in credit, and perhaps o n e should include D i o r i H a m a n i f o r his w o r k as the M e r c u r y of the campaign, and President Félix H o u p h o u e t B o i g n y o f the Ivory C o a s t for his firm and constant support. B u t it was Léopold S e n g h o r w h o was the m o s t eloquent defender of the idea t o the day of its final implementation. In a television interview in D e c e m b e r 1966, it w a s w i t h passion that he denied any contradiction b e t w e e n "la n é g r i t u d e et la francité", and declared a nostalgia for the old unities o f the d a y s of the French e m p i r e (Equatorial a n d West Africa). 6 0 H e denied that the Senegalese had any complexes in regard to their French d i m e n s i o n and he w e n t so far as to declare: " F r a n c e does not need Africa, but, as I have o f t e n said to General de Gaulle, w e others, w e Africans, need France t o help solve our p r o b l e m s . " This was one reason, he stated, for w h i c h : " W e w a n t to organize francophonia because the French language is an i n s t r u m e n t of a c t i o n . " Earlier, he h a d categorically denied that f r a n c o p h o n i a w a s in any sense "a machine of w a r m o u n t e d b y French i m p e r i a l i s m " (Le Monde, S e p t e m b e r 25-6, 1966). O t h e r African leaders also voiced opinions similar t o Senghor's. In N o v e m b e r 1967, the ambassador of Madagascar to Paris said: Surely... one adopts with the [French language] the ways of thinking, the reason and the clarity characteristic of the French mind [esprit] heritage of both Rome and Greece. Are our minds thus deprived of spontaneity? I cannot think so. India lost nothing in having Gandhi, Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore known in English. Can we seriously think of a larger America as a colony - in the sense of subordination to Great Britain? Brazil, a Portuguese colony? Of rich Argentina, admirable 60 Le Monde, December 21, 1966. This was still Senghor's position in 1973 - at the fifth Biennale de la Langue Française in Dakar he again pleaded for a union of French rationality and African emotiveness. One can be wholly "black" in French, he reiterated (Vie et Langage, June 1974, pp. 309-15).

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Peru or inflammatory Cuba as being victims of Spanish Franquist neocolonialism? (Balous 1970, p. 39).

Thus also spoke Jacques Rabemananjara, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Madagascar at the Niamey Conference on February 20, 1969, observing that French culture was the heir to classical Mediterranean civilization and belonged to all people - that French had been chosen as both the vehicle of protest against colonialism and as a medium to express Négritude. Négritude, in turn, had given the French language a "revolutionary fervor" by "kneading,, torturing, disarticulating" it to give it a new rhythm and a new density. 61 Above all, he said, French was a factor for unity among many different peoples and an opening to modernity. Among Frenchmen, one would include as prophets figures like Hyacinthe de Montera whose passionate plea for francophones to defend their culture, values, and language and to become one of the leading power blocs of the future was introduced by Michel Debré. Debre described the idea of a community defended by Montera as "a nostalgia and a h o p e . . . it is with France that they [members of the French-speaking Third World] stand the best chance of emerging from their economic and intellectual isolation . . . France is the champion of cooperation with no imperialistic arrière-pensée . . . " (Montera 1966). Another Frenchman who deserved mention was Jean de Broglie whose dedication to Francophonia was publicly announced in November 1966, in an address before the Académie Diplomatique Internationale. Among his many other services to Francophonia, a cause which he promoted discretely but with determination in spite of General de Gaulle's initial hesitations, was to preside over conferences held on December 1 and 2, 1967, entitled "Les Journées de la Francophonie" organized by the Association de Solidarité Francophone in Paris. The final resolutions of the conference were to recognize that the "francophone fact" existed, one surpassing the boundaries of nations and which demanded closer links between francophone states.62 Broglie declared, in the opening speech, that Francophonia was a struggle first of all for existence in a world being dominated by a few major languages (because of the extension of communica61

Culture Française 1969, S u m m e r , 2, pp. 20-8. T h i s refashioning of French, m e n t i o n e d b y Rabemananjara, m i g h t p r o v e to be a contribution to t h e language of crucial and lasting importance. For w h a t the Minister had in mind, see b y way of example, the poetry in Senghor ed. (1948). 62

See Francophonie '68 (1969, pp. 19-40). Broglie was chairman of the C o m m i s s i o n of Foreign Affairs of the National Assembly.

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tions and transportation in the modern world); second, a struggle for a certain type of civilization the French language embodied, for certain values that one assumed in speaking French ("a certain intellectual rigor . . . "); third, a struggle for expansion, necessary if one wished to survive in the dynamic modern age. Earlier in the year, in November 1967, Broglie had already revealed his view that Francophonia had distinct political, as well as cultural, implications. "One must say it openly", he had declared, "Francophonia will be, finally, political or else it will be nothing. It is not thus that one must interpret General de Gaulle's visit to Canada? [In Canada, de Gaulle g a v e ] . . . a new dimension to French diplomacy: that of Francophonia" (Le Monde, February 18, 1969). Certainly any list of "prophets" would have to include the indefatigable work-horse of the Agence, the Canadian Jean-Marc Léger who was elected its first secretary-general. Of him, P-J. Franceschini wrote in Le Monde: O n first impression, this elegant and youthful man, with the somewhat stiff affability o f a chief o f protocol, makes one think m o r e o f a bureaucrat than o f a militant. H o w e v e r , the defence o f the French language and all the affinities and solidarities that it represents, and even the complicities a m o n g so many diverse peoples, has been the great cause o f his life. 6 3

As a teacher, then as an editorialist for Le Devoir (Montreal), he had consistently defended the ideal of a francophone community and at Niamey he soon proved that to him this ideal took precedence over his earlier sympathy for the ideal of Quebec independence or his allegiance to France. The first Niamey conference was held in February 1969, and at its opening André Malraux, in an eloquent speech, indicated France's support. The second conference was held in March 1970, and it established the structure of the Agence and confirmed Léger's election as SecretaryGeneral with Hyacinthe de Montera and the Togolese Michel Kekeh as his Deputy Secretary-Generals. Those invited to attend both conferences included thirty states, all the fifteen members of O C A M (Cameroons, Central Africa, Ivory Coast, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa, Dahomey, Gabon, Upper Volta, Madagascar, Mauritius, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Chad and Togo) who had met and approved of the idea at a meeting at Kinshasa in January 1969, and Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Burundi, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, Cambodia, Laos, Bel63 June 14-15, 1970. Léger, who has been cited several times in earlier pages, was president of the Association des Universités Partiellement ou Entièrement de Langue Française.

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gium, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Haiti, Canada (with special delegations f r o m N e w Brunswick and Quebec) and South (but not North) Vietnam. Invited also, as observers, were representatives of the following: the Conseil International de la Langue Française, t h e Institut de Droit des Pays d'Expression Française, t h e Association des Ecrivains de Langue Française, t h e Association "La Solidarité Francophone", a n d t h e Société des Acadiens.

All those invited came, except for Guinea and Mauritania. Algeria and Switzerland sent only observers with no official status. Those w h o became official members by signing (on March 20, 1970) the final agreements reached were twenty-one: all but one of the members of O C A M (Congo-Kinshasa wanting only associate membership), Belgium, Burundi, Canada (as well as the representatives of the four Canadian provinces in which French Canadians lived), France, Luxembourg, Mali, Monaco, Tunisia and South Vietnam. Haiti signed shortly after the conference; Cambodia left the conference before its conclusion; Laos asked for only associate membership; and the delegates of Lebanon and Morocco asked for a delay so that they might consult their governments. Lebanon joined the Agence officially in June 1972. A m o n g the declared aims of the Agence were: to act as a clearing house for member countries in the fields of technology and culture; to reduce duplication of educational and administrative efforts, in the case, for example, of schools for civil servants and administrators in Africa; to provide mutual technical assistance, teachers and doctors, etc., when needed; to share information; and to provide for cultural exchanges. T h e French language was, of course, declared to be the c o m m o n basis of association, and the symbols of the Agence proposed were the m o t t o Egalité, Complémentarité, Solidarité, and a flag with a blue background to symbolize the earth viewed f r o m space, and a white circle on top woven with a f l e u r de lis. The headquarters were to be in Paris. General meetings were to be held at least every t w o years in the different capitals of member states, the first to be in Montreal in 1971. The initial agreement on financing was very modest: only t w o million francs was provided for the rest of 1970, about 9.2 million for 1971. T h e sum was to be paid in the following proportions: 45 percent by France, 33 percent by Canada, 12 percent by Belgium; the remaining 10 percent by the other states (no state paying less than a m i n i m u m of 0.36 percent), but each member was to have only one vote. France significantly, revealed her far greater concern with bilateral "coopération" by refusing to agree to the sum of 30 million francs initially proposed for the Agence; she only accepted the figure of 15

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million (by 1972). France's contribution in 1973, indicatively, was only 1.5 percent of its budget for technical and cultural cooperation (46 percent of the Agence's budget). T o 1975 the Agence was as modest in its resources as it was grandiose in its conception (and perhaps in its future potential). The sort of problems it would face in becoming a genuinely substantial organization was revealed in its first crisis, one that occurred precisely at the time of birth - the election of Léger as Secretary-General. Léger, very popular with the African states, aroused indignation among French and some Quebec delegates by his stand in placing his loyalty to the international Agence above his loyalty to Quebec and so to France. He did so by rejecting the proposal advanced by the French that Quebec should be represented as a separate entity (i.e., on the same level as Canada herself). The conference decided for Léger's point of view that only "states" and not "governments" be represented, and the chief French representative at Niamey, Robert Galley, had to concede defeat. Quebec, along with N e w Brunswick, Ontario and Manitoba, had a veto but only through the Canadian Federal Minister (at the time Gerard Pélletier). The formula accepted provided that participants (like Quebec) exercise authority in the Agence only in terms of prior agreements between them and the sovereign states in which they lay. The acrimony over this issue was disturbing enough, but what alarmed some of the members most was the manner in which France had seemed to be using the issue politically to obtain for Quebec a sort of international recognition as autonomous, and thus limit Canada's intrusion into preserves France felt to be exclusively her own. It was not strange that Africans, in particular, should be delighted with Léger's leadership. In 1973 Dan Dicko of Niger was elected to succeed Léger. The activities of the Agence included: providing for a prize of 100,000 francs for the best international film in French; establishing two institutes to train administrators for member states; planning for an International Center of Scientific Documentation in Paris; subsidizing an exchange of youths between France and Tunisia; holding three seminars to discuss television education and problems of the diffusion of books and movies; arranging for meetings between directors of tourism and directors of artisanship among member countries; and helping to sponsor francophone film festivals (in Beirut, Quebec and elsewhere). 64 64 Note that Vie et Langage runs a "Courrier de la francophonie" for those interested in keeping up with the activities of the Agence. O n January 22, 1972, the Agence inaugurated the

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As could be seen f r o m the above discussion, all had not been, nor would be, plain sailing for the Agence. France feared Canada's intrusion into its African preserve, and it wished to maintain the advantages it got f r o m bilateral arrangements with its client states rather than sacrifice these to any multilateral body like the Agence. Other states feared the Agence might prove disruptive internally; thus Switzerland and Belgium were anxious lest the Agence serve to encourage separatism on the part of their Frenchspeaking elements as, of course, was Canada. Other countries, Algeria in particular, saw the Agence as a way of enforcing the French language and culture at the expense of native languages and traditional cultures and so refused to join. 6 5 Others, again, saw the Agence either as a meaningless showpiece, an absurd creation of dusty grammarians the Canard enchaîné has callcdfrancofaunes, or, conversely, as a dangerous threat, as did Guinea, and as did French linguistic regionalists like Yves Person w h o had called the Agence "un instrument redoutable du néo-colonialisme française" (Temps Modernes 1973, pp. 90-118, "Impérialisme linguistique et colonialisme"). Perhaps the most searching criticism of Francophonia was made by Jacques Berque. 6 6 A m o n g the concerns he expressed as early as 1967 when Francophonia was still in gestation were: it might become a political football in the internal politics of member states; second, by being a combination of France, its most powerful member, on the one hand, and the other members on the other, it would, in effect, end up a bilateral rather than, as intended, a multilateral union; and, referring to the Arab people in particular he observed that for those whose language of authenticity could only be the maternal language, the Agence could easily constitute a force for alienation. " A commonwealth", Berque insisted, "is something one emerges from, not something one enters. " Francophonia, in so far as it had validity, should be limited to congresses of university professors and École Internationale de Bordeaux whose director was a Canadian and which employed teachers from Tunisia, Belgium and France. Students came from many francophone states, as well as Quebec, to receive higher training in administration and technology. By the end of 1972 the Agence had also encouraged Lebanon to provide assistance in administrative techniques to some African nations; had provided Haiti, modestly, with pedagogical materials; and had helped Senegal to develop its new television network. 65 Ahmed Taleb, Algeria's Minister of Education, stated that Algeria believed "francophonie is tied to neo-colonialism" (Le Monde, March 7. 1972). 08 In an interview to Jeune Afrique April 9, 1967, pp. 66-8, General Mobutu of CongoKinshasa, when asked why his country had not become a member of the Agence, expressed a point of view similar to Berque's (Le Monde, March 30, 1971).

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intellectuals, and should not extend to establishing institutions with political overtones, institutions that might act as pressure groups to frustrate the genuine cultural self-realization of peoples. In any case, however vulnerable and however open to criticism, by the end of 1970 a rare child had been born - and at least on a symbolic level, an aggressive challenge to the spread of English, and a proud reassertion of the universality of the French language, had been made by francophones, almost in spite of France herself. 67 Edward Corbett (1972) might eventually prove to be right in his suggestion that as the purely economic unions between French-speaking African states weakened, as was the case after 1972, the Agence might come to serve as France's leading medium of influence in Africa, as well as elsewhere (pp. 81, 193). Thus the French language, while long since having lost its role as the predominant language of European culture, and having lost its preeminent hold in Syria and other Middle Eastern lands and with its presence virtually over in South East Asia, still had a role to play as possibly the working language of Western if not Eastern Europe, and through the options of leaders in Tunisia, and other states in Africa and elsewhere, had been able to consolidate its world role symbolically, at least, through the Agence de Coopération. Ironically, to many Frenchmen, it was at this time that, with increasing passion, the universality of French was to be challenged in France herself and in neighboring Belgium where French had been the linguistic component of this small country's cultural and political identity since her independence in 1830. 67

A senior French officer recently spoke slightingly of the Agence to me, arguing that France's bilateral agreements with individual countries were much more important politically and economically, than France's association with the Agence. For an extended discussion of the Agence and of francophonia in general see Paul-Jean Franceschini, "La Francophonie en Quête d'une Politique" (Le Monde, October 16,17, 18, 1973). At the conference of t h e ^ e n c e in Liège in October 1973, it was felt by many that the Agence was making inadequate progress, that it needed a new élan. See Le Monde, October 21-2,1973, and the special supplement on the Liège meeting September 16-17, 1973, pp. 21-7.

CHAPTER

3

The Challenge Within

Volem viure Occitan battle-cry

The quest for national identity had proved disruptive to empires where oppressed nationalities had come to think of themselves as nations; so also, within nations, minority nationalities whose identities had been aborted in the struggle for national unification, started in the West, in the nineteenth century, to reassert their identities and to claim autonomy within, or independence without, nations. The French empire had been no exception to this pattern in modern history, nor was France herself, or her close neighbor, Belgium. In the other neighboring, partly francophone, states, Switzerland and Luxembourg, on the other hand, a sense of national identity had emerged through effort, and g o o d historical fortune, based upon a mutual respect of differing nationalities, rather than through an attempted imposition of a single national identity. A brief treatment of the cases of Switzerland and Luxembourg will be made by way of contrast, following a fuller discussion of the regionalist upsurge in France, and the rise of the Flemish autonomist movement, both originating in the wake of the rise of nineteenth-century nationalism, and both maturing in the era since World War II, and constituting serious challenges to the predominance of the French language within the very bastions of her sway. As discussed in an earlier chapter, the struggle to unify France before the Revolution had met with much regional opposition, and the effort to unify prevented the full unification of France before and during the Revolution. With the "awakening of the nationalities" during and following the reign of Napoleon, and in the course of the nineteenth century, the rise of nationalism in Europe found expression within France herself, in opposi-

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tion to the predominance of the French language and to the hegemony of the île de France over the rest of the hexagon. Regional patriots began to defend the rights of speakers of Catalan, Flemish, Occitan, Basque, Italian and German not only to speak their "dialects" but to use them in the education of their children, in administrative fields, and as vehicle of their o w n historical cultures. In extreme cases such patriots even demanded autonomy or even independence from France. Originally the movements these patriots led consisted of small groups of intellectuals, in the Romantic tradition, primarily concerned with the linguistic and cultural revival of their peoples. But by the period after World War II many had become politically militant, often Marxist in their ideology, and sometimes prepared to use violent methods (see Temps Modernes 1973). Through deliberate government policy in part, and through the workings of economic, administrative and social integration, most of the peoples claimed by the regional patriots as their own were francophone and used French as their normal language of culture and of business. Use of the "patois" was usually limited to the peasants and to the urban lower classes. Advancement in life depended upon the adoption of French. In 1881 it was estimated that the numbers who still spoke the local "patois" were as follows: Basque, an apparently unique language of uncertain origin, 140,000; Catalan and other dialects that were forms of medieval Provençal 208,855; Corsican, an Italian dialect, 272,639; Breton, a Celtic tongue related to Welsh, 1,340,000; and Flemish, a Germanic dialect related to Dutch, 176,860 (Hayes 1930, p. 297). As for the citizens of Alsace-Lorraine, although their representatives in 1871 declared unanimously their desire to remain with France, a majority spoke German and German was, of course, favored by the German occupiers from 1871 to 1918. O f these regionalist languages, most seemed potentially or actually dangerous to the French government because of their possible exploitation by foreign powers for their own ends: Italy, in the case of Corsican; Belgium, in the case of Flemish; and, of course, Germany, in the case of Alsace-Lorraine. And during World War II the Germans attempted, unsuccessfully however, to exploit Breton regional nationalism. Basque ever since the accession of General Franco to power, overlapping the Spanish-French borders, constituted a -problem whenever Basque nationalists, most recently under the leadership of E.T.A., used French territory to strike at Spanish installations. The regional language question was thus for many Frenchmen both a cultural and a political problem of

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serious dimensions, as it once had seemed to be to the leaders of the French Revolution. Each regionalist movement had its o w n interests and cultural ambitions, naturally, but they all shared c o m m o n complaints against Paris; they often cooperated in protest stances; and they all shared to one degree or another Robert Lafont's view of French history as he discussed it in Sur la France (1968) and in his many other works. In broad outline, Lafont's thesis was that the various non-francophone provinces and regions of France had been annexed over the course of time, often with great cruelty, and that this process of the " m a k i n g " of France had led to the destruction of the cultures of these highly civilized peoples. Neverthless, the Old Regime, in spite of itself, remained a sort of "ethnic federation" with many provincial privileges and rights still extant, and with no unitary educational system imposed to alienate children f r o m their mother tongues — provinces were still called "nations" (pp. 153 ff). But the tendency was to assimilate provinces administratively where this was possible, and over time, as France became increasingly integrated economically, provincial élites tended to be w o n over to loyalty to Paris and to adopt the French language. The last important case of pre-modern provincial resistance came during the Fronde. The provincial cultures, in the process, tended to dry up, orthography became increasingly French, languages ceased to evolve and became "dialects" and literary talent was siphoned into the French o r b i t Rivarol himself was an Occitan. Meanwhile France's prestige increased internationally and the preponderance of Paris became that much more difficult to resist. This dessication of provincial culture Lafont called "l'aliénation provinciale", bad enough, but benign compared to the "aliénation nationale" which was to commence with the French Revolution in 1789. With the French Revolution provincial rights and institutions disappeared, and France was restructured mathematically into departments. O u t of a group of "primary nations", a "secondary nation", based on the political contract of citizenship came into being, open to anyone willing to accept the national "mission", a mission which, with Napoleon, became naturally imperialistic — "la nation secondaire est toujours définie par sa mission universelle" stated Lafont (p. 192). Within France, fervently under the Jacobins, by inertia and instinct under later regimes, the primary nations were gradually reduced virtually to dust by laws, discussed in an earlier chapter, providing for administrative centralization and a c o m m o n public educational system. This newly released French nationalism, with it

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universalist pretensions, helped to explain the imperialism of the French in the nineteenth century and, to give a particular example, the brutal effort to suppress the Algerian nation after 1954. Lafont's proposals for the future, unlike more militant regionalists, were to allow for the revival of the primary nations culturally and administratively but within the context of the French nation. France would become like Switzerland and so better suited to play her role in a peaceful and united Europe in which all primary nationalities would enjoy their cultural heritages freely. This was Lafont's vision and hope. Early expressions of regionalist patriotism within France parallelled the rise of nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe generally. These early expressions included, among the Bretons, the publication of Hersart de la Villemarqué's epic Bargaz-Breiz in 1840, and the history of Brittany by Pitre-Chevalier in 1844. In 1898 a Breton Regionalist C o m mittee was founded. By 1909 the movement had developed enough for five Breton deputies to petition to have Breton taught in local public schools. The Basque Association of Friends of the Basque Language (Eskualtzalian Biltzarra), ancestor of the present militant Ikas, was founded in 1901. In 1854 Frédéric Mistrel founded the movement called Félibrige with the intent of reviving Provençal as a language of culture and education, and in 1859 he published his novel Mireille in one form of this language. He had been anticipated earlier by Romantic intellectuals like Fabre d'Olivet, Raynouard and Rochegude. Upon his death in 1825 Olivet had left a manuscript entitled La Langue occitanique restituée. In the Marseille communal uprising of 1870, according to Lafont, the patriotic songs of Victor Gelu were sung in Occitan, as were other Occitan refrains in the uprising of viticulturalists in 1907 (p. 220). These earlier expressions of regionalism were generally élitist and, from the vantage point of the leaders of their contemporary counterparts, exoticist rather than revolutionary, even if they did point the way. Mistral, for example, was regarded by Lafont and others as a proponent of sentimental provincialism which ended up by becoming virtually the tool of the French authorities who exploited its revival of provençal costumes and ways for purposes of tourism. In essence the Félibrige movement was politically reactionary, with no roots in the masses. Henri Giordan, in addition, criticized Mistral for having been a purist, and for having elevated the Occitan of his own particular region to an unacceptable universality and, also, for having promoted this language according to French

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orthography ("L'Enseignement de l'Occitan" in Language Française 1975, pp. 84-103). As regionalism gained momentum, the movements became more popular and intransigent. 1 But it was not until the twenties that regionalism became serious enough to become dramatic. In 1925 in response to a petition from a group of Provençal leaders demanding the use of their language in the educational system, Anatole de Monzie, Minister of Public Instruction, issued a circular (on August 14, 1925) which aroused a storm (see Hayes 1930, pp. 310-17). He argued that the exclusive use ofFrench in the public educational system was consistent with French policy since the time of Francis I, that there was much too much illiteracy in France to justify the waste of time and resources on the luxury of instruction in "dialects" at the "expense of the collectivity". A passionate debate ensued in the columns of newspapers and magazines. Defenders of the circular argued that linguistic regionalism aroused racist feelings, was disruptive of the historically hard-won unity of the state, and played into the hands of foreign expansionists such as the Germans and Italians. Thus argued Professor Abel Biasse, Ernest Prévost, and the Walloon, Dumont-Wilden, who pointed to the dangerous results of Flemish regionalism in his own country. One regionalist answer was that of the Breton Eugène Delahaye w h o insisted that a rich language like Breton, with its own literature, could not be reduced to the level of a "dialect". Pierre Dominique, anticipating arguments later to be made by Robert Lafont, argued that France was, in fact, a nation composed of several nationalities, that to encourage the cultures of these nationalities was to contribute to peace (as with Switzerland) — a contented Alsace would help prevent war with Germany, and so also Corsica, with the Italians. Centralized nationalism, he insisted, was by its very nature bellicose and threatened war. In the particular case of Alsace-Lorraine, where initial enthusiasm for reintegration with France after World War I was quickly dampened by French intransigence in regard to language, as well as religion - AlsaceLorraine still operated according to a special concord with Rome — resistance arose. Teaching of German in the school system was greatly reduced and in 1920 the High Commissioner of the Republic for Alsace and Lorraine (Gabriel Alapetite) made his notorious remark before a regional consultative assembly that he hoped each day Alsatians would learn one new word in French and forget one in German (Langue Française 1975, 1 Sec Temps Modernes (1973) for names and brief histories of the multitude of revolutionary regionalist parties.

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Marc Hug, "La Situation en Alsace", p. 120). In 1924 French was made the sole language of the University of Strasbourg. In 1926 the Abbé Sigwalt organized a militant party, the Heimatbund, to demand autonomy for the provinces and the use of G e r m a n in the public sector. At the same time George W o l f s m o r e moderate Elsàssische Fortschrittpartei demanded that German be m a d e the language of education. T h e response of Poincaré's government was inflexible to these demands. In 1927—1928 five autonomist newspapers were suppressed (on the grounds that it was illegal to express patriotic feelings in a foreign language) and t w e n t y nine autonomist leaders w e r e temporarily arrested. T h e rebels w e r e forced to submit, but passions remained unassuaged into World War II. After World War II regionalisms grew in intensity and in radicalism in E u r o p e in general, as, for example, a m o n g the Slovenes, the Welsh, the Catholic Irish in Ulster, the Basques in Spain, and so also, as indicated, was this true of France. In post-war France, under pressure f r o m the Socialist and C o m m u n i s t parties, the French government was forced, in principle at least, to accede to some of the demands of some of the regionalist m o v e ments. The breakthrough came with the passage of the Socialist sponsored Loi Deixonne (January 11, 1951) which provided for the optional teaching of the regional languages of Basque, Catalan, Breton and Occitan. Corsican was excluded until 1974, Flemish through 1975 at least, and special arrangements were made with Alsace and Lorraine providing for an increase in the educational use of German. T h e stranglehold of "jacobinisme linguistique" had, according to the editor of Langue Française, been broken (1975, p. 36). But much remained to be done if the regionalists were to be genuinely appeased. Regionalists continued to protest t h r o u g h 1975 that the implementation of the new law was inadequate. It only offered provincial languages as optional subjects of instruction; no adequate provisions were made for training teachers in these languages; lessons were assigned at inconvenient times; and, as important as anything else, these languages could only be taught in the regions in which they were spoken, not in France as a whole. T h e gap between w h a t had been conceded and w h a t m a n y regionalists still demanded could be seen in the Charte Culturelle of the Comité d'Étude et de Liaison des Intérêts Bretons issued in December 1972. Still demanded were: a license d'enseignement de celtique-, recognition of Breton as a living language in technical and agricultural secondary schools; recognition of Breton as a second language for the baccalauréat; examinations in Breton for adminis-

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trative positions in Brittany; and use of Breton in the administration of Brittany. But the recognized "dialects" were n o w taught to at least a limited extent in schools and universities. And one problem lay with the regionalists themselves to solve, the unification and orthographic standardization of Breton and Basque if these languages were to be used systematically as languages of instruction. T h e "dialect" that was perhaps best off was Occitan, the language once of most of Southern France. In 1930 scholars like Antonin Perbosc and Prosper Estieu founded the Societat d'Estudi Occitane which, particularly through the efforts of Louis Alibert, provided for a c o m m o n orthography for the various Occitan dialects as well as a c o m m o n dictionary and grammar. By 1943 provisions had been made to codify the particular dialects and orthography of Provençal, Gascon, Limousin and Auvergnat. By 1975 Occitanisme, which boasted of Occitan as the largest minority language in Europe, spoken in thirty-one departments, as well as in parts of Spain and Italy, was well on the way to fulfilling the aspirations of their slogans, " V o l e m Viure" (we wish to live) and "Paisan occitan: lucha or creba" (Occitan peasant, struggle or die). As well as the active Institute of Occitan Studies, the m o v e m e n t sustained a theater company, the Theatre de la Rue, a publishing house (Cap à Cap), and a review which published scientific articles in Occitan, Viure. It is difficult to tell whether these m o v e m e n t s were of episodic or permanent importance. T h e y did seem to p r o p o u n d a self-contradictory mixture of international socialism and of regional nationalism, and they often played lightly and anachronistically with the historical past. T h e y had formidable hurdles to overcome: the tendency for peasants w h o spoke varieties of the regional languages to become proletarianized in French when they moved to cities; the allegiance of most of the well-to-do to French; the pressures of radio and television, not to mention the French educational system. T h e poet René Nelli, although dedicated to the Occitan cause, expressed pessimism over the future of the movement. 2 H e observed that in Languedoc only t w o out of every thousand persons w o u l d be able to fill out their income tax f o r m s in Occitan, and only one in a thousand could understand the classics in Occitan translation. And most 2

See Le Monde, November 29, 1974, in an article by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in which the author questioned the tendency of linguistic regionalists to see their own plight as identical with the plight of foreign colonized peoples. N o Algerian or Vietnamese, he observed, had ever become prime minister of France.

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Bretons, according to one survey, wanted their children to learn French to assure their futures, even if they did object to their "victimization" in the highly centralized French economy. 3 Whatever future these movements might have, it was unlikely that they would disrupt the hold of the French language in the hexagon - at most, it would seem, they might provide some Frenchmen with a second domestic language. If one were to presume as an outsider, one might suggest that France could afford to be flexible in granting considerable autonomy, that she could count sufficiently on the attraction of Paris to assure that the great majority of its citizens would seek educations in French for their children, and that it would be better to allow for provincial bilingualism rather than to exacerbate feelings and render the regionalist movements more dangerous than they actually were. This would resolve the contradiction of the French government discouraging linguistic regionalism at h o m e while defending it in the Val d'Aoste, Louisiana, and Quebec. Such a policy of flexibility might dissuade the Basque movement in France f r o m adopting the violent methods of their counterparts in Spain, and avoid virtual rebellions, such as occurred in the economically depressed island of Corsica in 1975. In this year several Basque, Breton, and Corsican separatist parties remained suppressed and many of their leaders imprisoned. A policy of flexibility toward regional languages, it might be observed, had been supported well before regionalism became a serious problem for France, by some of France's most eminent intellectual figures, Proudhon, Michelet, Jaurès. O n a human level, one might agree with Henri Pirenne who, even while he saw his o w n nation threatened by regionalism, expressed sympathy for "protestation" against the "cosmopolitisme niveleur" of modern times, and a respect for the "persistance of traditions and memories of which language is only the medium of expression" (1922-1932, VII, pp. 391-6). While the challenge of regionalism within France was a source of discomfort, in Belgium this challenge was serious enough virtually to disrupt this nation whose identity, on a cultural level, had been originally French. Whereas in France regionalism could probably be managed with a somewhat less rigid approach on the part of France's rulers, in Belgium it threatened to rend Belgian identity into two hostile identities, as the 3

International Herald Tribune, February 4, 1974. A n o t h e r factor favoring French over the regional languages w a s psychological, an inferiority c o m p l e x in face of speakers of educated French felt by m a n y Catalans, for example, w h o s e best language was Catalan, this according t o D. J. Bernardo, in Langue Française (1975, pp. 37-61, "Appareil Educatif et Langue A u t o c h t o n e : Le C a s d u Catalan").

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struggle became increasingly envenomed. T h e Flemish regionalist thrust against French predominance anticipated within Europe herself anticolonialist revolutions against European imperial powers. In 1975 Belgium's population of some eight millions consisted of a majority of Flemish, speaking a germanic language almost identical with Dutch, living predominantly in the north, and the French-speaking Walloons, living primarily in the south, with Brussels, having a francophone majority, an enclave in Flemish territory. T h e stereotype of the Fleming was usually that of a deep thinker, combining in his character a sensual taste for life and for pageantry, and deep mystical Catholic spirit. T h e stereotypic Walloon was m o r e lively, mercurial, articulate, witty, deeply attached to his French culture. 4 Although legally a y o u n g nation dating f r o m the revolution of 1830 w h e n the population was about four millions, and French the language of the élites of both communities, Belgium had historical roots into a distant and proud past (see Pirenne 1922—1932). Famous for its artistic genius, its woollen production, and its c o m m u n a l liberties in the H i g h Middle Ages, it was united under Philip the G o o d (1419-1467), D u k e of Burgundy, but only lasted as an independent state until his successor Charles the Bold fell at the famous battle of N a n c y in 1477 at the hands of the French monarchy. Heir to the D u c h y was Mary w h o s e marriage to Maximilian of Austria b r o u g h t the territory under Habsburg rule, first under the Spanish branch to 1714, and then under the Austrian, until seized by France in 1792 and incorporated into France until 1815. Annexed then to Holland, its people rebelled in 1830 and with the support of France and Great Britain were defended f r o m reconquest until 1839 w h e n Belgium's perpetual neutrality was recognized, and the House of O r a n g e was forced to accept its sovereign independence. D u r i n g the Burgundian period, French was the language of court but Flemish was tolerated - language was not yet an issue. In the eighteenth century French served as administrative language under Austrian rule and during the period of French occupation the French language became m o r e rooted than ever a m o n g the administrative and upper classes, even t h o u g h Napoleon, not a linguistic chauvinist, allowed Flemish to be used in courts and as the text for public documents. Nevertheless, under his aegis, a public school system, of écoles centrales, was introduced whose language 4

Mallinson (1970, pp. 34—5). For a warning against seeing culture as an independent variable, harboring destiny within it, as opposed to seeing it historically, as changing in interaction with other factors, see Zolberg (1974).

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was wholly French. The Dutch attempted to reverse the situation; Dutch in the Flemish area became the sole official language and the language of the public school system. In 1817 the state N o r m a l School of Lier was established with Dutch as its language of instruction. But the alliance to Holland was never happy: the Walloons naturally resented it, and the Flemish whose élites were largely francophone, did not consider their language to be Dutch but rather a separate germanic tongue, and as staunch Catholics they feared the danger of Dutch Protestant intrusions a m o n g their people. In the struggle for independence the Walloon and Flemish élites cooperated — the latter as indicated were French speaking and French educated and the Catholic hierarchy favored the use of French. In general one could hope that Belgium would become a nation with a c o m m o n national identity, even if the Walloons would have preferred as king the son of Louis-Philippe rather than Leopold I of the House of Saxe-CoburgGotha, enthroned largely because of British pressure. Leopold I, in any case, established himself as the symbol of national unity, with powers m o r e extensive than those of the British monarch, but limited, however vaguely, in the constitution, by a parliamentary form of government. Considerable communal autonomy was provided for and the public system of education that was established never attracted as many students as did the private schools. According to the constitution "the use of the language in Belgium" was declared to be "optional", but French inevitably became the language of national administration, of the legal system, of the army, and remained the exclusive language of the universities of Ghent, Liége, Louvain and of the Liberal University of Brussels established in 1834. Language was no cause for concern in the first years of independence and, indicatively, the three parties, the Liberal, the Catholic and the Socialist, which were to dominate Belgian politics for decades, ignored the language question in their programs and sought supporters across linguistic lines. Henri Pirenne, Belgian's great historian and conscience, could see Belgium as a liberal and pacific syncretism of what was best in the civilizations of the Germans and of the French. B u t the seeds of dissension were there. In its early years the nation was too exclusively dominated by Walloons, and Wallonia was the prosperous part of the country economically. While members of the Flemish élite, being francophone, had no linguistic problems, members of the unilingual masses found distinct disadvantages in having to plead their cases in courts whose language was exclusively French and in having to deal with mainly

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francophone civil servants. With the rise of democratic sentiments in Europe generally and the rise of romantic nationalism, Flemish leaders became increasingly self-conscious of their c o m m u n i t y as a distinct nationality, and one that perforce played a secondary and inferior role in the life of Belgium. T h e first Flamingant, that is partisan of Flemish culture, to express Flemish grievances openly was perhaps a Brussels lawyer named Verloy w h o in 1788 published an essay in Flemish denouncing the predominance of French, and the prejudice that held " n o t h i n g seems beautiful or great if it does not c o m e f r o m France". 5 In 1832 a similar pamphlet was published by P. Blommaert. In it he declared that the use of French in Flanders frustrated mass enlightenment and deadened the "national soul". Stimulus to this self-consciousness came f r o m the N o r m a l School of Lier, and t h r o u g h the recognition given to past Flemish culture by the publication of the Flemish epic Reynaud the Fox by the G e r m a n scholar Jacob G r i m m . T h e first m a j o r intellectual to p r o m o t e the Flemish language was Jan Frans Willems (b. 1793), initially a partisan of the H o u s e of Orange, w h o prepared an orthographic system for the language, one used after 1841 and officially recognized in 1844 as standard. In 1836 Willems and Jan David established the first of a countless series of societies to advance the cause of Flemish. This was the Society for the Propagation of the Netherlandish Language and Literature. O t h e r intellectuals and scholars to join the m o v e m e n t included K. L. Ledeganck (d. 1847), w h o glorified the great cities of medieval Burgundy, Ghent, A n t w e r p and Bruges, in his The Three Sister Cities and T h e o d o r e Van Rijswijck (d. 1849), w h o w r o t e a popular patriotic allegory Antigoon (1841). But the most influential of all was doubtlessly Hendrik Conscience (1812—1883) w h o under the influence of Romantic writers, Sir Walter Scott in particular, produced in 1839, the great Flemish historical epic, The Lion of Flanders (De Leeuw van Vlaanderen). Most of the themes of the early Flemish nationalist appeared explicitly or implicitly in Conscience's work. It dealt with events leading up to and including the famous battle of Courtrai, k n o w n as the Battle of the Golden Spurs, in which in 1302 a vast a r m y sent to subdue the rebellious Flemish cities by the king of France was ignominously defeated, and e n o u g h golden spurs, w o r n only b y noblemen, were recovered f r o m dead bodies to indicate seven hundred French knights had fallen. T h e w o r k was full of patriotic gore and individual acts of heroism, but interestingly while 5

Clough (1930, p. 17). A leading scholar on the subject is Zolberg, op. cit. Isaacs (1975) refers to a manuscript by him entitled "Crises of Political Development in Belgium" 1972.

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Flemish Lilyards, that is supporters of the French king were treated with contempt (read: the francophone Flemish élite of Conscience's time, the Franskiljons or, in French, Fransquillons), the king of France was described favorably and his brother, Charles of Valois, was portrayed as a person of the rarest nobility. However, the battle-cry of the Flemish was "Flanders and the Lion! All that is French is false". T w o of the outstanding heroes of the resistance to the French were Flemish heads of Bruges' greatest guilds, the Clothworkers and the Butchers. T h e c o m m o n man was glorified through these two, and independent c o m m u n a l Flanders was contrasted with absolutist France. T h e language question appeared in the book, but not too m u c h was made of it, most probably because Conscience knew that the leaders of the Flemish armies, the sons of G u y de Dampierre, the C o u n t of Flanders, were French educated and spoke only French. Nevertheless, in a dispute between the head of the Butchers' C o m p a n y and a French officer, Breydel, the butcher, admitted only reluctantly and with regret that he could speak French. And in an episode that recalled the Sicilian Vespers, French soldiers were distinguished from Flemish citizens in Bruges, in a massacre, b y forcing the former to pronounce "Schild u n d V r i e n d " [Shield and Friend]. T h e epic of Conscience's made poetic allowances — for example, Peter de Conine, leader of the guild of Clothmakers in the novel was, in reality, according to Pirenne, an "obscure weaver". 6 And the story of Courtrai ended before the "Lion of Flanders", G u y de Dampierre's son Béthune was forced to cede the castelries of Douai and Lille to France when, indeed, Flanders, until then bilingual, "became purely l o w D u t c h in its language" (according to Pirenne). O t h e r contributions to the Flemish m o v e m e n t were made by the dramatist H. Van Preene (d. 1864) w h o w r o t e the national anthem Lion of Flanders and Professors M. de Vries and L. A. te Winkel w h o in 1864 published the standard Dutch dictionary. By 1864 in collaboration with D u t c h scholars, a standard orthography, syntax and g r a m m a r had been agreed u p o n — Flemish henceforth was recognized as basically Dutch. In 1840 a petition was presented t o the government asking that Flemish be used for all purposes in Flanders. It was written by Willems. It obtained 100,000 signatures. Nevertheless before 1870, Flemish nationalism remained a m o v e m e n t of a minority of the Flemish speakers. T h e m a j o r parties still ignored the language question and the Catholic C h u r c h in 6

See Pirenne (1915, pp. 144—50) for an account of the battle.

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Flanders still favored French. As Shepard Clough puts it, the movement consisted of a general-staff but no army (1930, pp. 101-2). After 1870 and to 1914 the movement gathered momentum and mobilized troops, and in the cultural sphere made important gains. Many authors wrote books in Flemish, including Guido Gezelle, and August Vermeylen, and Peter Benoit produced "national" music that made use of Flemish folk themes. In 1899 a Flemish opera house was opened in Antwerp; in 1893 the Flemish Municipal Theater was opened in Ghent. By 1900 there were 39 Flemish dailies and 334 weeklies published. O n July 11, 1902, the sixth centennial of the Battle of the Golden Spurs was celebrated with great popular enthusiasm, and Flanders adopted this as its national day. Flemish nationalism had become a mass movement. After 1870 the Flemish won one concession after another following one political crisis after the other until Belgium finally became, after World War II, in effect, a dualist state, a union of two separate national identities, with Wallonia wholly French, Flanders wholly Flemish linguistically, and Brussels a battleground kept from eruption by a careful and strict policy of bilingualism and a balancing and duplicating of offices along language lines. The language issue, once ignored by the major Christian Social Party, the Belgian Socialist Party, and the Party of Liberty and Progress, was now forced upon them, and in particular areas to split them into rival factions. In the nineteen-sixties parties such as the Volksunie and the Walloon Federalists, strictly communal and linguistic parties, began to make important political inroads into the system. It would be tedious, in the present context, to trace Belgium's political history in detail. In broad outline, after 1870 the Liberal Party tended to support French linguistic interests, the Catholics to support the Flemish, and the Socialists to split into a pro-Flemish faction and the pro-Walloon Social Democrats. Crucial in the politicization of the language question was the extension of the suffrage which served to weaken the power of the francophone Flemish élite in Flanders. In 1893 universal suffrage, with some qualifications allowing for plural voting, was adopted, but already by 1873 the Flemish had gained the right to plead in their own language in penal cases; in 1878 Flemish could be used in transactions with the administration; in 1883 courses in Flemish were given in public elementary schools; in 1886 a Flemish Academy was established by royal decree in Ghent, and a movement to transform the University of Ghent into a Flemish institution was under way before World War I. In 1898 the factual decision was made to recognize Flemish as an official language equal to

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French in all official publications. O n the eve of World War I, the rich coal fields of Kempen, discovered in 1901, were beginning to be developed the basis for an economic renaissance in Flanders which would in the future enable her to outdistance Wallonia. In 1914, however, French remained the predominant language in the national administration and in the army. The Flemish still felt like secondrate citizens, their sense of national identity still bruised. German occupation proved disruptive to Belgium's unity even though the bulk of the Flemish, as well as the Walloons, strongly opposed their conquerors. The German administration promoted the collaborationist Front Party of the Flemish "Activists" w h o dominated the Flemish C o u n cil in Flanders. The University of Ghent was transformed into a Flemish university by fiat. Germany's defeat was welcomed almost universally, but, then, the trials of the Activists produced sentences that were so severe that they aroused Flemish resentment. The successors to the Activists were the intransigent Maximalists, w h o demanded independence for Flanders. By 1921 Belgium was divided into two, linguistically, for educational and administrative purposes; by 1930 Ghent had become virtually a Flemish university; and in this same year soldiers were given the right to serve under commanders of their o w n language group. In 1934 King Leopold recognized the dualistic nature of Belgium by repeating his oath of office in Flemish. Governments n o w rose and fell principally over the language issue (see Fishman ed. 1971-1972, II, pp. 386-412, "Linguistic Pluralism and Political Tension in Modern Belgium" by Val R. Lorwin). The election of 1968 was virtually a referendum as to whether Belgium would continue to be a unified state (Mallinson 1970, p. 173). In parts of Belgium the Socialists and the Social Christian parties split according to language lines and presented separate slates. The militant Flemish Nationalists gained twenty seats, the Walloon Federalists twelve. T h e new government of Gaston Eyskens included fourteen Flemish and fourteen Wallons. Separate Ministries of Education, of Culture, and of Regional Economic Development, were established. A vital issue was the fate of the French language University of Lou vain. By 1969 it became wholly Flemish, and its Frenchspeaking faculties were moved from Flanders to Ottingues in Wallonia. While each part of Belgium consolidated itself as separate entities, the capital, Brussels, remained a battlefield. Here the bilingual solution was retained where it had collapsed in the rest of the nation. Set in Flemish territory, in the capital the French speakers constituted a majority in its

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nineteen boroughs. In 1864 the population of Brussels had been 38 percent francophone, in 1947 it was 72 percent and growing. The Flemish refused to allow a new census after 1947 for fear that this might enable families w h o once spoke Flemish, but were now francophone, to send their children to francophone schools, this according to the law by which children could only go to schools which taught in the family language. The Flemish deeply resented the populational overflow into areas beyond the nineteen boroughs and insisted that the borders of the city remained fixed. The city became, as indicated, totally bilingual with children of one language having to study that of the other. Thus Brussels, the host of so many international organizations, remained a hotbed of intra-national tensions. The linguistic Kulturkampf continued to plague Belgium, and crises kept erupting. In September 1973 the Flanders Regional Cultural Council passed a law providing that all employee-employer contacts in Flanders occur in Flemish. According to this law, made a decree by King Baudouin, inspectors were given complete freedom of "penetration" into firms, day or night, to assure compliance. The French press responded to news of this law with indignation. Terms like "Gestapo methods" were used, and the Flemish were denounced for isolating themselves in a "ghetto". It was observed that it was absurd to expect the same 200,000 foreign migrant workers in Flanders to conduct their affairs exclusively in Flemish. A second representative crisis erupted on June 12, 1974 when Leo Tindemans of the Social Christian Party, having failed to form a government in coalition with the socialists, had to promise further linguistic rights to both the Rassemblement Walloon and to the Volksunie, each group dedicated to further weakening Belgium's national cohesion. While the Flemish movement consolidated its position, the Walloons, of course, did not remain passive. The Walloon ideal had been to maintain the situation of 1830 and to hope for the extension of French among the Flemish through education. The argument for this was that French was an international language, appropriate to a small but proud nation set in a crucial area of the world with important possibilities of playing an international role. Walloons considered Flemish to be an undeveloped provincial language which it would be a waste of effort to preserve, certainly not a language to have their own children study as a second language. With the rise and extension of the Flemish movement, Walloon societies and parties began to be established, first t h e Société de Propagande Wallonne in 1888 a n d the Ligue

Wallonne de Liège in 1897. By 1912 some Walloons began to talk in terms of

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converting Belgium into a federation, and even suggesting partition. T h e Socialist Jules Destrée wrote his well-known Lettre au Roi sur la Séparation de la Wallonie et de la Flandre in 1912 in which he stated that any attempt to blend Walloon and Flemish into one nation was neither possible nor desirable. T h e Assemblée Wallonne was founded in this year, "Le Chant de Wallonie" was adopted as anthem, the red cock on yellow, inscribed with the w o r d s "Liberté" and "Walloon T o u j o u r s " , was adopted as national flag, and the opening day of the 1830 revolt against the "Netherlandish t y r a n t " made the national day. In 1938 the extremist party Wallon Indépendant was founded, and in 1961 André Renaud established the Walloon Popular Front, favoring federalism. In Brussels, the Walloons insisted on the "Gallic" view that a person be considered free to pick his national identity (and so be free to choose the school for his children), and opposed the " G e r m a n i c " view, as they saw it, which insisted that a child was for the duration of his life a m e m b e r of the language group into which he was born. Increasingly, Walloons supported the idea of federation, and some even annexation to France, if need be (see Boly 1971, and Becquet 1963). T h e Walloons, in contrast to the Flemish, tended to see their c o m m o n history f r o m different perspectives. T h u s Joseph Boly treated the Burgundian period the Flemish were so p r o u d of as one of "intrigue" and "coups de force" w h e n the "French s o u l " was almost crushed (pp. 57-80). Walloons were proud to have accepted the French invasion of 1792 with enthusiasm, to have supported Napoleon at Waterloo, and many insisted that the revolution of 1830 had been primarily the result of Walloon initiative. T h e y were proud to be culturally part of France, to boast of Henri Michaux, their greatest modern poet, as wholly French. In 1945 Charles Plisnier, a m a j o r Walloon writer w h o lived in France proposed to the Congés National Wallon that the Walloons had every right to j o i n France should Belgium n o longer prove viable (ibid., pp. 89-90). And writers like Boly were proud to be members of "Francophonie", and in its context, to have seen that independent C o n g o (now Zaire) had opted to erase any Flemish presence and adopt French as national language. T h e Walloons began to feel on the defensive in particular after the national census of 1947 showed 51.3 percent were Dutch speaking, 32.94 percent French, 15.7 percent bilingual in the Brussels area, and 1 percent German (Mallinson 1970, p. 185), and when economic indices began to s h o w that the Flemish north was rapidly outstripping the south. It was to counter the threat that economically as well as demographically Wallonia was becoming a "second-class" region, that Walloons began t o consider

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a u t o n o m y or even union with France. While perhaps only a minority of Walloons wished for fusion with France, m a n y saw Paris as their cultural capital. Walloon writers like Georges Simenon and Henri Michaux were indistinguishable f r o m their French counterparts. Marc Blancpain d o u b t lessly spoke for many Frenchmen w h e n he accused Flemish nationalism of chauvinistically sacrificing humanistic values and cultural g r o w t h by trying to restrict its people to a small and provincial culture when they had the option o f participating in a broad and universal culture as French speakers (1967, pp. 21-2). T h e Flemish answer to arguments such as Blancpain's was that French "universalism" was, in effect, cultural imperialism, and that the time had come for the Flemish to assert their suppressed national identity. In the last volume of his Histoire de Belgique, Pirenne treated Flemish regionalism with some sympathy and he agreed that in the past it had been unfairly disdained, but he hoped that tensions w o u l d remain only "linguistic" and never become "national" and so disrupt the "historical c o m m u n i t y " of a great nation. But he feared that the tendency to militate against "traditional bilingualism" as the solution to linguistic difference, might eventually t h r o w the very essence of the state into question (Pirenne 1922-1932, VII, pp. 391-6). By 1975 there seemed to be little chance for preserving the Belgian national identity for which Pirenne had done so much. It was not inconceivable n o w that Wallonia might even become part of France and perhaps Flanders even j o i n Holland, a project the eminent Dutch historian Pieter Geyl favored. From a broad humanistic point of view, Belgium's apparent failure to attain to the equilibrium and tolerance that b o t h Switzerland and L u x e m b o u r g had realized might seem disheartening. O n e might well with Pirenne have hoped that this nation open to all influences and peoples, "European", and devoted to peace by geopolitical necessity, might yet survive and absorb the thrust of linguistic regionalism, but by 1975 such a h o p e remained remote. If Belgian's identity, as a biregionalist nation seemed irremediably flawed, this was not the case with France's t w o other partly francophone neighbors, Switzerland and Luxembourg, both of which had been historically fortunate in preserving unity and a sense of national identity, and whose linguistic (and religious) diversity had become a source of enrichment, rather than enfeeblement. 7 7

Small areas in which French was a presence outside of France were also the Val d'Aosta and some of the Channel Islands like Jersey (referred to sometimes as "Anglo-Norman"). The Val d'Aosta (population about 100,000) attained to a special status in 1948 after the laws

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Partners since the thirteenth century in the creation o f the S w i s s nation 8 w i t h G e r m a n speakers, the f r a n c o p h o n e R o m a n d s had their o w n sense o f identity, e v e n if culturally m o s t o f their writers w r o t e in the French o f Paris and w e r e under the s w a y o f Paris' influence (Viatte 1969, pp. 2 7 - 4 2 ) . T h e r e w a s n o question that these p e o p l e - o n e million o f Switzerland's six millions, its l a n g u a g e official in the cantons o f Geneva,

V a u d and

N e u c h â t e l , w i t h a majority i n bilingual Fribourg and Valais — remained loyal to the S w i s s federation; nor that they q u e s t i o n e d its traditional neutrality; nor that they s o u g h t any special political links w i t h France. In fact, the majority r o m a n d Protestants, w i t h m e m o r i e s o f the R e v o c a t i o n o f the Edict o f N a n t e s and the persecutions o f H u g u e n o t s , tended to see France as a nation o f Catholics, or pagans, a f r i v o l o u s people, monarchical b y instinct. T h e R o m a n d s ' generally moralistic, introspective nature - as the stereotype w o u l d have it — w a s reflected in their language (Esprit 1962, pp. 6 4 0 - 9 , "En Suisse: une l a n g u e t i m i d e " b y Philbert Secretan), n o t a m e d i u m for literature, perhaps, but a s y m b o l o f an identity that w a s clearly S w i s s and n o t French. B u t there w a s o n e pocket o f serious linguistic t e n s i o n in Switzerland, the r e g i o n o f Jura. O v e r the last t w o decades French speakers here had militated for linguistic and religious (Catholic) rights w h i c h they claimed had been denied t h e m in the m a i n l y G e r m a n - s p e a k i n g canton o f B e r n e (of w h o s e s o m e o n e million, 14.4 percent s p o k e French). In 1947 the Rassemblement Jurassien w a s f o r m e d after a French speaker w a s denied an a d m i n i s of t h e Fascist r e g i m e seeking to suppress its French character and language w e r e abolished. Since 1948 French had an equal status w i t h Italian as the language of instruction. T h e majority of people s p o k e an original French patois (derived f r o m Latin) and f o u r of its nine newspapers w e r e in French. With the opening of n e w trans-Alpine tunnel routes, this small province w o u l d b e c o m e increasingly i m p o r t a n t as a tourist center and its bilingual culture w o u l d therefore be of utilitarian value. T h e C h a n n e l Islands, marked b y a legacy f r o m the t i m e w h e n E n g l a n d w a s part of the N o r m a n empire, still maintained relics of their French past administrative officers w e r e still called baillis, prévôts and greffiers. U n t i l recently the juridical language was French and continued to be so in Jersey w h e r e French was an obligatory language in p r i m a r y school. B u t the trend was for English to b e c o m e increasingly p r e d o m i n ant and for the French presence to b e c o m e a matter of only historical curiosity. 8 Switzerland since 1938 w h e n R o m a n s h (rhéto-romanche) was recognized as an official language (although not for purposes of administration) was quadrilingual o n the federal level. Constitutionally, each canton decided w h a t language to use officially within itself, even in military matters. T h e Canadian authors of The Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism 1967-1970, V: 10-11, I: 79-80, f o u n d little reason t o believe that multilingualism in Switzerland was a factor for disunity. M u t u a l toleration prevailed and each m i n o r i t y derived a sense of security b y its p r o p i n q u i t y t o one or another large nation speaking its o w n language. A good general survey of Switzerland's historical experience is that o f T h u r e r (1970).

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trative portfolio. While over the years some rights were conceded to the francophones, agitation among the population of Jura (only 12,000), sometimes violent, culminated on June 23, 1974 when three ofjura's seven districts voted in favor o f j u r a ' s eventually becoming a separate canton, Switzerland's twenty-third, and sixth among the cantons with a Frenchspeaking majority. In March 1975, a plebiscite was held to determine whether the four German-speaking districts would join the canton or remain with Berne. They chose to remain, provoking a six-hour battle between militant separatists and the police in Moutier. The final recognition of the truncated Jura as a canton had to await a national vote, since involved was a revision of the national constitution. It was hoped in 1975 that Jura did not have the makings of a Swiss Ulster. 9 But generally this small federal republic which had survived against the Habsburgs since its beginnings in 1291; French domination (1798-1803) as the Helvetic Republic; and the internal civil war of the Sonderbund (1845—1847); as well as two world wars in which she had remained neutral, had escaped the curse of internal fragmentation and had maintained a national identity based not upon language, but upon a dedication to certain common values, interests and memories. As Denis de Rougemont argued, Switzerland's contribution to Europe had been to survive as living proof that an identity could be sustained that was not based on the destructive premise that a single language was essential to define a nation nor that every linguistic nationality must perforce become a nation or else be subordinated to a larger nation speaking its language (1965, pp. 186-91). Rather, he maintained, Switzerland's identity, and this included the Romands, rested upon a common historical experience of like-minded, small, particularized republics, enjoying communal autonomy, suspicious of ceremonial, enjoying liberty in a genuine federation, and in osmosis with both France, Italy and Germany - a model for a peaceful rather than a fratricidal Europe. 10 Luxembourg was unique in that while French was the official working language, the masses spoke a Germanic dialect (Luxembourgeois or Let9

For an extended discussion of the issues see J e a n - C l a u d e B u h r e r in Le Monde, J u n e 21, 1974. 10 T h e title of the G e r m a n translation of R o u g e m o n t ' s b o o k b y S. Eisler best brings out this theme: Die Schweiz Modell Europas: Der Schweizerische Bund als Vorbild für eine europaische Föderation. A searching analysis of why Switzerland has been a success is that o f Steiner (1970). Impressive as his m o d e l is, as a possible prescriptive pattern for others, it ignores the historicity of the Swiss accomplishment, the hardly reproducible g o o d historical f o r t u n e of its peoples.

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zeburgisch), and more people spoke German than did French (see Edwards 1973, and Naval Intelligence Division 1944). This small Duchy had a mixed historical heritage - it was once a member of the Zollverein but always closer to France and Belgium culturally than to Germany. Liberated from Nazi Germany after World War II, French replaced German as the official language (also official since 1939 was Luxembourgeois), and debates in parliament were conducted in French while the press was primarily German and most science students went to Germany rather than to France to complete their higher studies. Luxembourg, with a population of only about 337,000, could not be but a mixture of the cultures and languages of the two giants to the east and south of her. Luxembourg was comfortable with her identity and was not threatened by linguistic disruption. Her educated class was fully bilingual, and French and German were spoken by peoples mixed together rather than separated into geographical regions. All three religions received state support, the Catholic (the majority), the Protestant, and the Jewish. The national vernacular had a dictionary since 1847, but little was published in it. The national anthem, De Feierwon, written in the vernacular by Michael Lentz expressed Luxembourg's devotion to an international role as well as the security of her national identity with the words " C o m e ye from Prussia, Belgium, France/To view our land with friendly glance... We will remain just what we are (Mir welle bleiwe wat mir sin)." While minute, comparatively, Luxembourg played an important role in helping to build Europe, initially through her role in Benelux, the prototype of the Common Market Luxembourg and Switzerland, with the exception of the canton of Berne, were cases, then, in which the linguistic component of national identity, happily, had not proven disruptive. These nations seemed, indeed, to be models of the enrichment of national identity through transcending linguistic diversity. Belgium, sadly, was close to forfeiting a national identity because of a failure to resolve problems of linguistic diversity. Bilingualism as a solution had failed in the nation as a whole and served as precarious solution for Brussels. It had been replaced by biculturalism, by a split into two separate national identities. France herself, while challenged by the upsurge of linguistic regionalism had the option of relaxing her uniformitarian instincts and allowing for bilingualism in parts of her territory or, alternatively, risking a future of confrontation and repression, a price not worth the probable disruption that would ensue. Generosity would seem to be the course of realism, with Luxembourg and Switzerland possible inspirations if not models.

CHAPTER

4

French as Identity Shield

"It is not surprising . . . that any community which is governed through the medium of language other than its own has usually felt itself to some extent disenfranchised, and that this feeling has always been a potential focus for . . . political agitation." (R. L. Watts, in The Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Bilingualism and Biculturalism

1967-1970, I: p. xxix.)

In France herself, and in Belgium, the predominance of the French language was challenged by the awakening of nationalities in quest of alternative linguistic identities. In other parts of the world, however, the French language served as a shield of identity for nationalities that were minorities and, for one reason or another came to consider their identities threatened in the sphere of the non-francophone cultures of the majorities. This was true of Lebanon, Quebec, to a certain, if only exotic, extent of Louisiana, and in a special, albeit limited way, in parts of South America. In this chapter I consider the French language as part of the identity of the Christian Lebanese in the context of the larger Arab world, Quebec in the context of a predominantly anglophone Canada, Louisiana in the United States, and South America in the larger sphere of the Americas, dominated, or felt to be dominated, by the United States. While, as seen in a previous chapter, the French presence had waned in Syria and in other Middle Eastern countries, Lebanon proved an exception, even though this small country of some three millions had opted legally for independence in 1943, and had achieved it in 1945 when the last French troops left its shores. The French cultural presence remained an important component of Lebanon's national identity largely because the politically and economically predominant Christian Lebanese wanted it to

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do so. While Arabic-speaking, they insisted that their country had a special role to play as bridge between West and East, as well as serve as a haven for their co-religionists, and that this meant that the European and American cultural presences should be preserved and that the Lebanese should remain bilingual if not polyglot. T o preserve this role against b o t h internal Muslim opposition as well as external pressures, Christian ideologues often traced their identity to what they called their Phoenician ancestors, and m a n y saw and felt that in the French language this identity — and their differentiation f r o m their Muslim " A r a b " neighbors - could be preserved. Important in this endeavor was the ideologue Michel Chiha (1891-1945), and writers like Charles C o r m (d. 1963), the author o f L a Montagne Inspirée and other works in French. When C o r m said in a p o e m "Langue des phéniciens, ma langue libanaise . . . " h e could, as far as m a n y francophone Lebanese were concerned, have substituted in evocation of a language long since dead, the living language of France (Présence Francophone, A u t u m n 1972, pp. 5-14. " P a n o r a m a de la littérature libanaise d'expression f r a n çaise", by Saher Khalaf). O f French another Lebanese writer, Hector Klat, could write: " M o t s français, mots du clair parler de doulce [sic] F r a n c e . . . " (ibid.). General Catroux, as seen earlier, had failed to maintain France's political presence in Lebanon according t o his plan " . . . to exploit the old sentimental link with France, the instinct of defence against the plans for her absorption . . . " (1949, pp. 336-7). But France did and continued to maintain her cultural presence and, to a considerable extent, her political influence in this small half-Christian land of about t w o and a half million people. 1 Symbolic of this was the continuation of the Consular Masses 1

N o census had been taken since 1932 for fear of the political upsets a new one might produce since the distribution of political offices was based upon the size of each tessera in the mosaic that is Lebanon. An analysis of the population of the city of Beirut - whose influence pervaded almost all of this small country - made in 1956 revealed the following tesserae (the figures included only registered residents): Muslim Sunnites Muslim Shiites Druzes Maronites Greek Catholics Greek Orthodox Protestants Latins Armenian Catholics

76,116 17,062 2,457 18,101 7,617 25,276 5,482 2,771 8,809

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performed in the presence o f French diplomats, celebrated until 1947 in the Maronite Cathedral in Beirut and then, as a compromise to Muslim opinion, in the Patriarch's residence in Bkerke. 2 According to Lebanon's Constitution, while Arabic was the "official national language" a "special law", not yet issued, was to provide for the "cases in which use will be made o f the French language". In this loyalty to France, Lebanon, particularly after the disastrous invasion of Egypt in 1956, stood alone, as Eugène Mannoni, o ( L e Monde, lamented in an article entitled "Liban, Dernier Réduit de l'Influence Française au Proche-Orient". 3 One year after Suez, and while the Algerian Revolution was raging, Mannoni found that the Lebanese had to be discreet in any expression o f francophile feelings; but he observed that French schools were frequented by 42,286 students in primary schools, 8,746 in secondary, and 1,982 in higher studies; that two prominent Muslim leaders, Saib Salam and Abdallah Yafi, sent their sons to Jesuit schools, and that even in the Muslim cities o f Tyre and Sidon young children were studying enough French (eight hours a week in primary schools) to become genuinely bilingual. In the seventies the French presence was evident everywhere, even if it was running serious competition with English. The national educational system was French in structure and the Army was French in style — attending the Officers' Club was almost like being in a part o f France. The Armenian Orthodox Chaldeans Syriac Catholics Syriac Orthodox Jews Other

42,762 1,178 4,757 9,764 5,382 215

From Abou (1961a, pp. 119ff). Useful studies ofLebanon's complex culture are Hanf (1969), Babikian (1933), and Funk (1971). Typical o f the Lebanese scene was the protest Kamal Joumblatt, the testy Druze leader, made when the rector o f St. Joseph placed the French ambassador in the same front row at the celebration o f the mass o f the Holy Spirit on October 23, 1960 (L'Orient, October 20, 1960). Indignation was also aroused when the Maronite Patriarch Mu'ushi greeted the Count o f Paris as " Y o u r Highness" during a visit in 1961 (Az-Zaman, June 6, 1961).

2

3 In an interesting comparison o f the treatment o f the Algerian Revolution by Egypt's most important newspaper, Al-Ahram, and Lebanon's Al-Nahar, Miss Randa Mikati (1975) discovered that while the former gave uncritical and ardent support to the Algerian rebels, the latter maintained an ambivalent position out o f sympathy for France while at the same time supporting the Algerian cause. Al-Nahar, unlike Al-Ahram, continued to favor a solution through negotiations and defended de Gaulle's probing efforts to find a solution.

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most important cultural society, the Cénacle Libanais sponsored lectures usually, although not exclusively in French; the Catholic Press (founded 1848) was an important cultural force; ex-presidents like Fuad Chehab and Charles Helou were more eloquent in French than Arabic; and many Lebanese w h o were n o w raising their children trilingually, with English as the third language, shared the prejudice that English was a vehicle for business, French for culture. Many of Lebanon's finest writers (Georges Shehadeh, Andrée Chedid, Charles C o r m and others) wrote in French. In 1942-1943 the n u m b e r of students in French schools was 39,513 and in British or American 6,836; in 1954-1955 there were 1,280 schools in which both Arabic and French were taught; 110 in which only Arabic was taught; 230 in which Arabic and English were taught and 290 that were trilingual. In 1953 the National University was founded along French lines - many lecture courses were in French. In 1974 there were 85 establishments in Lebanon teaching French to 55,940 students. 4 When the Algerian poet, Malek Haddad, d r u m m i n g up sympathy for the Algerian rebels in Beirut, referred to the French language as his exile, the editor of L'Orient, Alfred Naccache, with a knowing twinkle, asked if, after all, Haddad had not enjoyed his exile. 5 In the sphere of education, according to one recent authority 95 percent of the Lebanese students learned French either in primary or secondary, and four good lycées, t w o of which are run by the Mission Laique, educated about 5,000 students (Balous 1970). O n a university level, the University of St. Joseph (connected to the University of Lyon) had about 1,800 students almost all of whom were Lebanese, while of the American University of Beirut's 4,000 students only 47 percent came f r o m Lebanon itself (although 78 percent came from Arab countries). 6 A very influential institution was the secular Centre d'Études Supérieures (also linked to Lyon University) which included an École Supérieure de Lettres (504 students), a Centre d'Études Mathématiques (245 students), an Institut de Géographie du 4 T h e s e establishments École Supérieure de Lettres students), as well as the s t u d y i n g in France, 153 1974). 5

included the Centre d'Études de Mathématiques (438 students), the (571 students), the Lycéesfranco-libanais of the Mission Laique (3,856 c o m p l e x of St. Joseph University. T w o thousand students w e r e w i t h French g o v e r n m e n t scholarships (Le Monde, O c t o b e r 20-1,

Talk given at the office o f L'Orient, June 16, 1961. For the period before 1948, a useful source is M a t h e w s and A k r a w i (1949, part VI) w h i c h is o n Lebanon. 6 Figures o n financing w e r e very hard to c o m e by. A c c o r d i n g to a reliable source, the French g o v e r n m e n t subsidized its educational presence in Lebanon o n a university level to the t u n e of $ 1 - 2 million a year, perhaps $10 million if financing of the French hospital was included.

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Moyen Orient (which offered a licence), and the Institut (established in 1946). The French government ran four cultural centers, two in the Muslim cities of Sidon and Tripoli. The leading scholar of the French cultural presence, the Jesuit priest Père Sélim Abou, a leading proponent of this presence, maintained that not only was French as much a Lebanese language as was Arabic, but that the extirpation of this language, and of the French cultural presence in general, would mean the end of Lebanon's identity. 7 According to his research in Beirut in 1960,57 percent of those educated used French to 22 percent who used English (among the latter many also knew French). In rural parts of "Syria" — of 1,376 cases studied in 1960, 20 percent were bilingual in Arabic and French and only 2 percent were bilingual in Arabic and English. On the basis of this Abou argued that French was entrenched in rural Lebanon and the presence of English there was of relatively minor importance. To strengthen his case Abou cited the following figures: among Beirut's prominent banks, 5 used only Arabic, 21 used French and Arabic, and 8 used Arabic and English; and in Beirut, among adult heads of families in 1953, 42 percent knew French and 22 percent English.8 Proche

et du

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Of the linguistic situation in Lebanon a decade later (1970), Abou ascertained that 45.1 percent of the population in Beirut knew French, 26.6 percent knew English.9 In both cases the figures had risen since 1960, but 7

See Abou (1962) and Esprit (1962, pp. 753-69, "Bilinguisme au Liban: la rencontre de deux cultures"). Abou had some things to say about the safcir, or "sur-dialecte" as he called it, of the French-educated Lebanese w h e n they converse a m o n g themselves. An example is the answer " b o n j o u r a y n " to " b o n j o u r " - the f o r m e r reflected the Arabic dual f o r m ; one answer to marhaba [hello] was marhabtayn. See also Abdallah M. Naaman, "Regards sur la 'Francb a n a i s ' " (Présence Francophone, A u t u m n 1974, pp. 129-31). A m o n g " e r r o r s " made by francophone Lebanese were to say "il m'aime à m o i " for "il m ' a i m e " ; and " u n e affaire de cent livres" instead of "environ cent livres". T h e same mixture in ordinary conversation occurred a m o n g English-educated Lebanese, and it was not unusual to hear elegantly dressed Lebanese ladies chattering in French, English and Arabic simultaneously. A thoughtful critique of A b o u ' s theses was that of Sayigh (1968, pp. 383-93). H a n f (1969, pp. 99, 132-3, 262-3) generally supported Abou's thesis as to the preponderance of the influence of the French educational system in Lebanon. 8

Here Abou referred to Charles Churchill's The City of Beirut: A Socio-Economic Survey (Beirut 1954). 9 Abou (1974). This paper was presented to the fifth Biennale de la Langue Française in Dakar, September 1973. Less favorable to Abou's thesis was a rapid survey entitled the " A n g l o Saxon T i d e " (Monday Morning, March 5-11, 1973, pp. 4—10), which came to some of the following conclusions: of Lebanon's 58 percent of bilinguals, 39.7 percent spoke French as their major second language and 14.1 percent English. T h e n u m b e r of students in g o v e r n ment schools w h o picked English rather than French as their second language was minimal. O n the other hand 75 percent of technical and scientific b o o k s sold in Beirut were in English,

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the gap between francophones and anglophones remained the same. In public schools, 87 percent of the students picked French as a second language, 13 percent English. O f books imported into Lebanon in 1970, the bulk o f b o o k s (253, 197 kg.) w e r e f r o m France, to 155,701 kg. in English the value of the French books was Leb. £2,500,722 to Leb. £1,530,994 for the English. These, and other figures, Abou asserted, indicated that French was holding its own, and this because for historical reasons French was " r o o t e d " in Lebanon, was used often in the public sector, provided an easier access to university studies (to St. Joseph and to the Lebanese University whose second language of instruction is French), and was the language of the Western power most friendly to the Arab world. B u t English, A b o u admitted, was posing m o r e of a threat than before, one that was "nettement agressif'. T h e extension of English enjoyed ten times the financial support than did French, and some of this support (through the Ford Foundation) financed the powerful Centre de Recherche et de Développement Pédagogiques (the C R D P ) . This body, founded in 1970, had a far-reaching mandate t o reorganize the structure and content of public education in Lebanon, and its director (still in 1975) was Wadia' Haddad, an American-trained professor f r o m the American University of Beirut. Abou accused the "Americans" of going so far as to encourage the total arabization of the Lebanese University in order to weaken the hold of French as a cultural language, assuming that this would favor the culturally "neutral" English language, used mainly for commerical and other practical purposes. In 1955 Hagazian was established as an Armenian college whose m e d i u m of instruction was English. In general, to 1975, while the national bureaucracy was dominated by graduates of St. Joseph, graduates of the American University occupied m a n y key positions, although certainly not all, in banking and other areas of business, and in the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance, Economy, and Social Affairs (Salem 1973). T h e competition between the French and the " a n g l o - s a x o n " worlds in Lebanon had a long history, one that has often been absurd. In the past Catholic and Protestant missionaries had vied over the souls of y o u n g Lebanese. A story had it that one day a prominent American educator arrived at a village to establish four schools. " W h y four?" he was asked.

and of594 books published in 1970 in Lebanon 3.7 percent were in English and only 3 percent in French. In the sphere of business, American-registered firms in Lebanon were twice as many as were French - 70 percent of all foreign firms were either American or British.

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" O n e for girls and o n e for boys, and as s o o n as they are built the Jesuits w i l l c o m e and establish t w o m o r e " , he a n s w e r e d . 1 0 In recent times, a Frencheducated participant, in a series o f talks at the A m e r i c a n U n i v e r s i t y o n Albert C a m u s g i v e n several days after his death, told this author that his colleagues at St. J o s e p h had c o m p l a i n e d because the A m e r i c a n s had m o u r n e d the French writer before they had. T h i s w a s unfair because C a m u s "is o n e o f ours", they insisted. A n d , w h e t h e r j u s t l y or not, the hand o f the French E m b a s s y w a s suspected w h e n the Lebanese T e l e v i s i o n C o m p a n y closed d o w n its English newscast in 1970. T h e English lang u a g e Daily Star (March 8 , 1 9 7 0 ) ran a cartoon s h o w i n g a French Lebanese announcer, surrounded b y a French flag and slogans reading " V i v e la France", etc., saying: " S o y o u see, m e s d a m e s , messieurs, ze English N e w s eez cancelled for ze c o m m e r c i a l reasons only!" 1 1 W h e t h e r French w a s really as r o o t e d as A b o u maintained remained to be seen. B u t that it w a s part o f the identity o f m a n y Lebanese - m u c h m o r e s o than English w a s a m o n g t h o s e educated in E n g l i s h - s p e a k i n g s c h o o l s - f e w 10

T h i s story, told a b o u t C o r n e l i u s Van D y k e of the American University of Beirut appeared inal-Hital (Cairo), vol. 9, 1901, p. 237. It was not insignificant that in spite of strong pressures, the American B.A. was n o t admitted as equivalent to the licence until 1969. In his article in Esprit, A b o u m a d e a strong attack o n the American education system which, h e argued, only taught culture and language superficially and so p r o d u c e d deracination, while French and French culture w e r e taught as in France - deeply - so that the Lebanese y o u t h came to understand the A r a b d i m e n s i o n of himself better as well as developing the French side o f his personality. This m a y seem paradoxical but w h a t A b o u meant was that the American system inculcated envy and self-contempt, unlike the French system w h i c h enabled its products to feel French culture w a s their o w n so they did n o t feel alienation within it. T h e y could m o r e easily accept the other side of their personality, the Arab. Critics of A b o u , of course, argued the converse, that because the French system assimilated its charges so t h o r o u g h l y they ceased t o be A r a b at all. 11

A violent attack o n the action of the Lebanese Television C o m p a n y (linked to the French Television n e t w o r k ) appeared in O l a f H a d d a d , Your 1 O'clock English TV Newscast (Beirut, April 1970), a pamphlet prepared for the Lebanese Television E m p l o y e e s Syndicate. S a r d o n i cally Imad Shehadeh in The Daily Star (October 10, 1971) w o n d e r e d if a culture war b e t w e e n French educated and A m e r i c a n educated m i g h t not p r o m i s e to eclipse Lebanon's sectarianism. At t h e time of writing, he observed, five m e m b e r s of Lebanon's cabinet w e r e o f American formation, Saib Salam, t h e premier, Elias Saba, his d e p u t y , N a j i b Abu Haidar, Minister of Education, Saib J a r o u d y , and K a m a l K h o u r y . T h e French educated were anxious. W h e n the cabinet of y o u n g experts gave w a y in M a y 1972 t o a traditional type of cabinet - t o t h e relief o f s o m e f r a n c o p h o n e s - Dr. Salah Salman, a professor at the A m e r i c a n University, had been added to the roster of administrators as Minister o f Health. In its editorial of February 7, 1972, L'Orient-Le Jour stated that the " a d v a n t a g e given t o the A U B [American U n i v e r s i t y of Beirut] over USJ [the University of St. J o s e p h ] in the distribution of ministerial posts had ended by c o r r u p t i n g (vicier) the a t m o s p h e r e " . This, before the p r i m e minister's visit t o President P o m p i d o u w h i c h b r o u g h t assurances of French s u p p o r t for L e b a n o n ' s integrity in February 1972.

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would dispute. And ever since the end of the Algerian Revolution, and especially since General de Gaulle's rather pro-Arab stance after the ArabIsraeli war of 1967, it was easier than before for many Lebanese to feel comfortable with their allegiance to things French. 12 More serious as a threat to the French presence than was English was the attitude of those, usually of the large Muslim Sunni sector, who resented any Western presence as prejudicial to what they held to be Lebanon's essential Arab identity and culture. Representative of the tension over this issue was the dispute in 1961 between Pierre Gemayel, leader of the almost exclusively Christian Lebanese nationalist party, the Kataib, and Kamal Joumblatt, Minister of Education at the time, over whether to increase the national financial investment in the official primary school system. J o u m blatt favored the proposal as a way of raising standards, but Gemayel saw the proposal as not only unjustified financially but as a threat to Lebanon's private school system which provided for Lebanon's ideological multiplicity and so guaranteed its multi-cultural identity. 13 At the same time (1960-1962) tension was compounded by a strike called by the Order of Lawyers against allowing the newly established Beirut Arab University attached to Egypt's Alexandria University, to bestow degrees in law. Some Muslim leaders viewed this strike as an anti-Arabist plot to protect the cultural hegemony of Western universities and so frustrate the "Arab resurrection". The supporters of the strike argued that the Arab University was a colonialist intrusion by Nasser's Egypt. The final compromise allowed for Arab University law degrees but under strict government supervision. 14 Some Muslims, like Professor O m a r Farrukh, saw the foreign schools as a latter-day version of the Crusades, a threat to the Muslim and Arabic character of Lebanon. 15 A militant Palestinian like Fawaz Turki — and since 12

During his Middle East tour in January 1974, Foreign Minister Michel Jobert failed to visit Lebanon. France's Lebanese friends were hurt. Jean Chouri in an editorial in L'Orient-Le Jour (January 29, 1974) entitled "Souvenirs . . . Souvenirs . . . ", suggested that Lebanon should send him a bouquet of forget-me-nots. Jobert's successor, Jean Sauvagnargues, made up for this lapse in October 1974. 13 L'Orient (January 12, 1961). Most private schools were better than most public schools and taught more students. The constitution guaranteed liberty of education. 14 For an account of this crisis see Hanf (1969, pp. 315-17). 15 According to O m a r Farrukh, "There is no Lebanese culture. Lebanese culture is a French-Christian culture. We believe we are Arabs who live in Lebanon . . . Greek-Latin culture has nothing to do with Arabism. We are for the study of classical Arabic, they [those w h o claim the Lebanese to be of'Mediterranean' and Phoenician origin] are for the study of the dialect." Cited in Hanf (1969, p. 336), who, after interviewing various prominent

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1948 the three hundred thousand Palestinians had become, willy-nilly, one of the " e t h n i c " components o f this heterogeneous small nation — e x pressed in fervent terms his contempt for the gallicised sector o f Lebanese society (Turki 1972, pp. 62, 67). Thus he wrote o f the leading Lebanese Christian paramilitary party, led by Pierre Gemayel, the Kataib,

"... a

Falangist would kiss your behind if you paid him the compliment o f saying you thought him a Frenchman". And he recalled bitterly that during his student days, when he and his friends took to wearing traditional Arab clothes and conversing only in Arabic, that a Falangist would exclaim: " O , la, la . . . C'est dròle, c'est bien dróle". Others like Kamal al-Hajj, although he was a Maronite, felt that bilingualism undermined the ability o f the child to feel psychic security and this inhibited genuine creativity. Rudolf El-Kareh deplored the fact that Lebanon was divided up into small cultural "islands", several o f these sustained by foreign powers, and Joseph Moghaizel viewed the current system o f occidentalizing children o f the élite as cutting this élite from the masses and so perpetuating cultural tensions and general social irresponsibility. 16 Sélim Abou rejected these various charges. 1 7 Lebanon's identity was not only Arab, he insisted,

Christian and Muslim leaders came to the conclusion that the former generally favored the present system o f education in Lebanon and believed that the free foreign universities were a symbol o f Lebanon's special role between East and West, while the Muslim leaders generally favored arabization and a closer control o f the foreign educational systems (ibid., pp. 263-83, 334—7). In 1961, according to Theodor Hanf, figures on attitudes toward Arab unification among those who only spoke Arabic were in favor, while only 22 percent o f those who spoke at least one foreign language were in favor. Among those who regularly spoke English or French among their friends, 3.4 percent were in favor (pp. 346, 352). He concluded that the Lebanese educational system tended to stabilize and perpetuate cleavages between classes and religious groups. In 1971 he repeated his survey to find that while political stands still tended to follow religious rather than class lines, in the interval o f a decade, secularism and radicalism had increased, and that while pro-Western students had declined from 45.4 percent to 33.4 percent, pan-Arabist sentiments among Muslims had also declined (in favor o f loyalty to Lebanon). " L e Comportement politique des etudiants libanais" (Travaux et Jours, January-March 1973, pp. 7-52). A fresh survey after the October War o f 1973 might very well have proved a reversal o f the trend away from pan-Arabism. Between 1961 and 1971 the number o f university students increased from around 4,000 to 17,000, and the lower class element from 3 percent to 10 percent. L'Orient-Le Jour, February 13, 1974, and L'Orienl-Le Jour, supplement, March 16-22, 1974, pp. 29-31. An ironic twist to the language problem was given when on January 22, 1974, in a television debate, Bahige Takieddine, a member o f the government, accused his French-educated opponent, Raymond Edde, o f being able to speak only colloquial Arabic. Edde replied that while Takieddine was speaking a very refined classical Arabic, he was speaking the language o f the people. 16

17

Abou (1962, pp. 199-206) summarized the views of his opponents fairly and in detail. It

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it was also Mediterranean, and if bilingual education produced any disrespect for Arabic, this was only because Arabic was badly taught. As for creativity, many bilingual people, he observed, had been creative; if the Lebanese were more successful in commerce than in art, this was for sociological and not linguistic reasons. 18 In 1974 Abou resumed his defence of the French linguistic presence, this time against heightened criticism from radical Muslim Arabists who were using this presence as a "scape-goat" (Abou 1974, pp. 113-27). The argument of these radicals was that poorer students, forced to study in public schools where foreign language instruction was very bad, entered universities at a disadvantage because many courses were taught, at the Lebanese University, in French. More broadly, they argued, French served to freeze social inequality. Abou, recognizing the justice of this criticism, argued that the answer was to teach French more effectively in the public schools, less rigidly, and more pragmatically. The alternative, fully arabization of the university, would lead to intellectual regression, he insisted. Toward the end of 1970, many were disturbed, others delighted, when the government, under Ghassan Toueni's lead as Minister of Education, proposed that the national baccalauréat system be arabized even in the sciences. The debate waxed furious and every conceivable criticism and defense of the proposed reform was made. The rector of St. Joseph, Abdallah Dagher, was cited as saying, " U n bon Libanais doit être bilingue"; a long letter to LeJour (January 6,1971) was headlined "Arabization, Factor for Unity"; and a second long letter January 18, 1971) was entitled, "Arabization: yes, b u t . . ." The debate would doubtlessly continue for a might be noted that Kamal Hajj, one of Abou's leading opponents over language, was an ardent Lebanese nationalist. In 1974, when appointed to be head of the philosophy section of the Faculty of Letters of the Lebanese University, he aroused considerable criticism by allegedly teaching his students that while the West constituted no threat to Lebanese sovereignty, Arab nationalism, Syrian nationalism, and Zionism did (L'Orient-Le Jour, November 1, 2, 1974). 18 The dispute over bilingualism often erupted in the pages of Lebanese periodicals. See for example L'Orient, February 22, 1964, in which Lucien Berouti attacked Abou's ideas. For Abou's indignant answer see L'Orient, February 29, 1964. In Le Jour, April 21, 1967, René Habachi, defending the Mediterranean along with the Arab identity of Lebanon, suggested that the French language was as proper a medium for self-expression in Lebanon as was Arabic. And in Le Jour, June 24, 1970, Père Allard of St. Joseph suggested that before one could decide on the wisdom of doing away with bilingualism the Arabic language had to be modernized in various respects before it could become an effective medium for modern scientific subjects.

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long time, and if ever the issue of bilingualism was resolved in this complex and heterogeneous little country, it would be, as with most other issues, through the spirit of compromise, the spirit by which Lebanon had survived and even thrived, at least to 1975. In 1972, however, there were indications that important changes might be in the offing in Lebanon's traditional and traditionalist structure. In the April elections a number of members of radical parties were elected, and during the year students of the Lebanese University clashed, on several occasions, with government troops. The students demanded, inter alia, that the standards of the university be raised to those of the private universities, and that the latter be "Lebanized", that is brought under some degree of government control. Accusations of "cultural imperialism" were levied against the education system for placing an unfair emphasis upon foreign languages to make it difficult if not impossible for students from the less well-equipped national schools (which in the main serve the poorer students) to pass examinations necessary for future employment. Also demanded was the reinstatement of equivalences between the Syrian and Egyptian degrees and the Lebanese baccalauréat, which was more difficult to obtain (see Travaux et Jours, Jan—Mar 1971, pp. 65-80, "Ghassan Tuéni et les étudiants des écoles secondaires" by J. J. Donohue). These demands by students, supported by leftist political parties, seemed to indicate increasing radicalization, both socially (with class interests replacing sectarian), and culturally (antagonism to Western-type education). 19 Such radicalization inevitably threatened the French presence in particular, the Western in general. Parallels to this development could of course be found in other parts of the francophone world, in Madagascar for example, and in Morocco where the great increase in students, in a country whose economy was relatively stagnant, provided for an explosive social situation. By 1972-1973 there were, in Lebanon, as in Morocco, violent expressions of frustration over the need to know foreign languages 19

This radicalization was the main reason for the title of Michael Hudson's (1968) work, The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon. Edmund Rabbath (1974), a prominent jurist, aroused controversy when he argued that Lebanon's progressive future lay in "laicité" and "arabité", and away f r o m confessionalism. H e was denounced in a debate at the Cénacle Libanais by Boulos Naaman of the University of Kaslik for importing dangerous ideas from France, ironically, ideas quite unsuitable to a religiously-oriented East and into a Lebanon whose raison d'être was to protect confessions. The debate was summarized in L'Orient-Le Jour, March 31, 1974. A bizarre incident occurred when a performance of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme on October 16, 1973, in Paris, by a Lebanese troupe, was broken up by radical members of the General Union of Lebanese Students in France on the grounds that such a performance by Arabs served "cultural imperialism".

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to study in even the national university. As in Morocco, foreign languages had come to seem to many Lebanese radicals to be symbols of privilege and discrimination. Lebanon, to be sure, was provided with the traditional safety valve for a population explosion of qualified unemployables — emigration. One estimate had it that as many as 40 percent of students between 16 and 22 in Lebanon (students in the last two years of secondary and the first two years of college) envisaged migrating upon graduation. 20 In 1974, with the rebirth of Arab self-confidence and the enormous increase in oil revenues, it seemed that Lebanon's interest in identifying more closely with the Arab world than heretofore had increased. This factor, in addition to growing radicalization among the masses, would serve to favor tendencies toward greater arabization. Even at St. Joseph about half the lectures in the Faculty of Administration and Political Science were in Arabic, one third in the Faculty of Law. But so long as Lebanon depended upon its international role as banker and entrepot, French and English would continue to be used. French, however, as a language of culture, was likely to decline except among certain sectors of the population, the Maronite in particular. The educated Lebanese of tomorrow would almost certainly be trilingual, in French, Arabic and English, but it would be in Arabic that his roots were likely to remain deepest, and Arabic would remain the language of the masses. In 1975 the very life of Lebanon seemed to be at stake. 21 This republic which had operated on the extra-constitutional compromise of 1943 which provided for the sectarian division of political authority, and in which Christians promised not to rely upon any Western power and the Muslims not to press for unification with Arab neighbors, disrupted into violence — the center, for various reasons, would not hold. Among these reasons were Muslim feelings that the 6-5 formula for the division of political authority no longer corresponded with demographic reality, and the growing awareness among the have-nots, led by leftists, often financed by outside powers and abetted by radical splinters of the Palestinian movement, of social injustice in this plutocratic land. Against these and against the fact of the heavily armed presence of the Palestinians in their encampments, Christians, spearheaded by the Kataib, sought to defend 20

Monday Morning (June 18-24, 1973, pp. 4-13). A survey based o n 400 interviews m a d e by the Middle East Services and Research C o r p o r a t i o n (BSR). 21 Salem's w o r k (1973) in its optimistic thesis that Lebanon was an example of h o w m o d e r n i t y and tradition, planning and laissez-faire could cohabit w i t h o u t violence, n o w seemed less prophetic t h a n that of H u d s o n (1968).

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Lebanese sovereignty and the Lebanese system. Lebanon's precarious state was the result of such internal factors as well as heavy financing from outside sources - rumor had it that Libya was pouring in millions to support the Muslim cause against the Christian establishment Colonel Qaddafi so hated, that Iranian money supported the uprising of the dispossessed Shiite Muslims; that Syria and Iraq each supported its own rival branch of the Ba'th party, and that perhaps Western agencies and Israel supported the Kataib. In 1973 the Lebanese army had attempted to disarm the Palestinians this had proven impossible. In 1975 to the chagrin of many Lebanese Christians, armed Palestinians helped to keep order, when order could be kept, in the cities of Sidon, Tripoli and Beirut itself. Some talked gloomily of partition as deaths mounted into several thousands, and of giving up France's poisoned gift to Lebanon when she created Great Lebanon by adding to the predominantly Christian "Mountain", the predominantly Muslim areas of the Biqa', Tripoli, the South, and Beirut (this in order to strengthen the state in which, the French believed, their presence could longest survive in the Middle East). Those sympathetic to the small state of Lebanon could only hope that through her traditional sense of compromise she could once again survive civil war as she had in 1958. This time the task seemed harder - a restoration of the sectarian balance alone would not be enough — demands for greater democracy and for greater social justice would have to be satisfied, and the Christians would have to accept geopolitical realities created by the establishment of Israel in 1948, its expansion, and the transposition of the angry community of the Palestinians into its already delicate and complex web of uneasily balanced and now conflicting identities. France, Christian Lebanon's traditional patron and creator of Greater Lebanon, was in 1975 in no mood or position to help - partly because of her heavy dependence upon oil from Muslim Arab states. Whether French would continue to serve as an identity shield among many Christian Lebanese remained to be seen. To this date, however, French had served as a dimension of their identity as it was to the francophone Canadians of Quebec, even if not on as profound a level. In Canada the French language presence played both a positive and a negative role. Positively, this presence so dense and rooted in a part of the nation, Quebec in particular, constituting a way of life going back to the sixteenth century, could be seen as a cause for pride and cultural enrichment. Negatively, to many English-speaking Canadians, it constituted,

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unless they were bored by the subject, a source of disruption and a threat to national cohesion. 22 T o many French-speaking Canadians, their situation as a minority in a mainly English-speaking nation, and as even more of a minority in a mainly English-speaking continent, represented a constant threat to their personality as well as to their language. To many of them the English victories of the Seven Years War were tragedies, breaking their links with metropolitan France, and to militant minorities among them these had been battles only, the war continued. The cornerstone of Canada's eventual status as a "dominion", Lord Durham's Report of 1839, openly advocated the full assimilation of the French Canadians to English culture to prevent the obstreporously divisive role they had played under Louis Joseph Papineau in the events leading up to the Durham mission. The Report provided for the union of Lower Canada to Northern Canada under a single Assembly which, it was assumed, the English would control (Craig ed. 1973). Lord Durham's prophecy of assimilation, however, failed for sociological reasons, as well as the French will to survive. Montreal, for example, never became a "melting-pot" in spite of the fact that even as late as the post-World War II era, one half of the city spoke English, three-quarters of a million were bilingual, and the top positions in business were occupied by anglophones. Children continued, in francophone homes, to be raised in French in their early years, and upon retirement workers forced to be bilingual for employment purposes reverted to a monolingual status and in French helped raise their grandchildren (see Fishman ed. 1971—1972, II, pfp. 231-54, "Bilingualism in Montreal: A Demographic Analysis" by Stanley Lieberson). And Durham failed to foresee that the French Canadians would coalesce as a bloc with anglophone reformers and so preserve their identity politically. Particularly instrumental in realizing this coalition was Sir 22

See The Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1967—1970), c o m m o n l y k n o w n as the " B and B r e p o r t " . C a n a d a ' s federal constitutional structure w a s based u p o n the British N o r t h American Act of 1867 (only judicially valid in its English version). T h e Senate was appointive and did n o t e m a n a t e f r o m the Provinces. T h e federal Parliament had "residual" p o w e r s over non-specified matters and in emergencies (applied during the t w o W o r l d Wars and in O c t o b e r 1970 to c o m b a t terrorism). T h e r e was n o provision for constitutional review — in 1971 an attempt t o fashion a constitution was partly defeated b y Q u e b e c because insufficient guarantees w e r e provided for provincial rights. T h e p o w e r s of the federal g o v e r n m e n t w e r e g r o w i n g - a w e a p o n had been federal purse control over "joint-projects". Provinces could only impose direct taxes, the federal g o v e r n m e n t both direct and indirect taxes. O n J u l y 7, 1969, b o t h French and English w e r e recognized as official languages in matters federal and parliamentary.

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Wilfred Laurier, a French Canadian who became the first francophone Prime Minister of Canada between the years 1896-1911 (Neatby 1973). A brilliant pragmatic politician, he forged the Liberal Party into the first truly national party through a series of compromises that gave some protection to Quebec's identity within a united Canada. Until the early sixties a Canadian like H. Blair Neatby, in his study of Laurier, could argue that " . . . events subsequent to Laurier's death suggest that the compromises accepted during his lifetime have so firmly established Confederation that it can never again be seriously challenged" (p. 321). One thing Neatby failed to see, however, was that the Liberal Party, depending in part upon liberal-minded business support, would help open the way to the domination of Quebec's economy by anglophones, and so, in later decades, provide material for dissatisfaction on the part of native francophone radicals and patriots. Considering, however, that in 1763 there had been only 70,000 francophones in Canada, and that many francophones were encouraged to migrate to the United States, with industrialization in the nineteenth century, it was something of a miracle, René de Chantal observed, that the national identity of Quebec had survived (Chantal et al. 1969, pp. 27-52, "The French Language in Canada"). Except for several minor pockets elsewhere, in 1975 the French linguistic presence in Canada was important in N e w Brunswick and Nova Scotia, both parts of what had been once N e w Acadia, Ontario and of course, Quebec, where French had become a dimension of cultural and even political nationalism. In New Brunswick, whose francophone population consisted of 250,000, out of a total population of about 630,000, French was an obligatory language in school and a new French language university had been established called t h e Université de Langue Française de Moncton, The Société

Nationale des Acadiens (founded 1881), also in Moncton, helped to preserve the French cultural identity of the Acadians. The province, in its own "quiet revolution" that paralleled that of Quebec's received financial assistance f r o m France. In 1975 there were tensions in Moncton when anglophones prevented a plaque being placed on the city hall which read "Hôtel de Ville de Moncton". T w o thirds of the city's 50,000 anglophones expressed strong objections to having their children forced to learn French, and they elected to Parliament an opponent of bilingualism, Leonard Jones. Nova Scotia had 90,000 francophones who constituted only 12 percent of the total population of the province, and Ontario had around 700,000

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francophones who constituted a relatively small minority in a province whose population was over seven millions. 23 But the province o f Quebec was a different matter. Ever since de Gaulle's visit in July 1967, Quebec became o f dramatic interest both to Frenchmen and to the world generally. 24 It was on July 24, from the balcony o f the Hôtel de Ville in Montreal, that General de Gaulle ended a speech with the pyrotechnic expression: "Vive la Québec libre", slogan o f the Quebec Separatists. The drama was, three years later, tragically compounded when violence in October 1970 led to the assassination o f Pierre Laporte, Quebec's Minister o f Labor, by militant members o f a separatist para-military group, the Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ) — kidnapped but then ransomed was the British trade commissioner, James Cross. Several facts illustrated why these events in Canada were o f such importance to France and, of course, to Canada as a whole. Quebec, three times the size o f France, had a population o f about six millions, o f which five millions were francophone - the total population of Canada was about 21 millions o f whom about 44 percent were anglophone and 30 percent francophone (the other 26 percent consisted o f immigrant groups from different parts o f the world who usually became anglophone). About 82 percent o f all French Canadians were in Quebec. Montreal, Quebec's commercial capital, was the second largest francophone city in the world with a population o f 2.2 millions (it was 67 percent francophone), and boasted o f the largest French language television center in the world. Moreover, Quebec was no longer the provincial-minded, clericaldominated, province it once had been. In recent years it experienced changes toward modernity of such rapidity that Canadians now talked o f her "quiet revolution". 2 5 After World War II and particularly since the 23

Other than French Canada, there was a N o r t h American French presence in the islands o f

Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, and six other islands, which formed an overseas territory. T h e total population o f these islands was only about 5,000. 24

See Francophonie

'68 (1969, pp. 6 - 1 2 ) for a discussion o f the General's visit to Quebec, and

Tainturier (1967) for an extended coverage. Hoffmann (1974, p. 289) believed that de Gaulle seriously favored the eventual emancipation o f Quebec. T o interject a personal note, m y interest in the identity problems o f Canada was first aroused when a French Canadian couple who I had always known to be Marxist, internationalist, and very hostile to General de Gaulle, responded angrily to a bemused comment I made about de Gaulle's visit to Quebec. T h e y both insisted that de Gaulle had shaken the arrogant English Canadians as they deserved to be. 25

F o r an extended discussion o f contemporary Quebec see Jean Egen, " L e Québec entre

deux destins" {Le Monde Diplomatique,

January 1971, pp. 12-15), and the special supplements

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death in 1959 of the grand old patriarch of Quebec politics, Maurice Duplessis, a staunch traditionalist, the way was open to change. Younger and more progressive men were now in power and considerable strides had been made in industrial and financial development. By 1962 Quebec's population was 70 percent urban and 32 percent industrial and the annual G N P per capita was very high relative to other nations of the world at $1,309, although the average for English Canada was higher, $1,540 (Esprit 1962, pp. 669-90, "Le Canada français", Jean Pellerin). By 1973 the G N P of Quebec had increased by 13 percent to a quarter (28.5 billion dollars) of Canada's total. The birth rate, however, to the consternation of Quebec nationalists had declined between 1951-1971 from 21.9 per 1,000 to 8.5 (the difference between deaths and births). The average family had declined from six children to only two. The church, once respected as the leading guardian of French Canadian identity, was losing prestige as well as domination over the educational system it once fully controlled. The career of a priest no longer had the cachet it once had, and enrollment in seminaries was declining. In the field of culture, French Canada in modern times had made important contributions to French culture. Le Devoir (founded 1910), which emphasized Quebec's French identity, was ajournai of high quality, and French Canada had produced writers of the caliber of Jacques Godbout and Marie Biais, both of w h o m won literary prizes in Paris; the internationally famous chansonnier Félix Leclerc; and a crop of talented movie producers. In spite of this impressive progress, however, the people of Quebec tended to feel that they were something of a persecuted minority, their language and their cultural values in danger. Why? For one, they felt that the national government had favored the English-speaking states over them and they resented the predominance of English Canadians and the English language in the business world of even Montreal where 77 percent of jobs (in 1970) paying over $15,000 were in English hands (Newsweek, November 2, 1970, p. 13). Teachers of French noticed that English-speaking students in Quebec on Quebec in Le Monde (1974) and Le Monde Diplomatique (1975). An excellent sociological study of Canada as a whole is that of Porter (1965). See also Viatte (1969, pp. 46-52). Studies of the "Quiet Revolution" include those of Desbarats (1965), and Sloan (1965). Important insights appear in articles by W. E. Lambert, Hannah Frankel, G. Richard Tucker and other sociolinguists at McGill University. A summary of some of their findings (based on use of the "matched guise technique") appears in Lambert (1970). O n the language problem in history, the classical account is that of Maynaud (1972).

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itself only began to take their French language courses seriously following the terrorist campaign of the sixties. In 1975, in Montreal and within the Quebec economy generally, anglophones were still top-dogs; 20 percent o f Quebec's population, they controlled 80 percent o f the higher echelon positions. In February 1973 Le Devoir published part of the findings of a commission d'enquête whose task had been to study the state of the French language in Quebec under the chairmanship o f Jean-Denis Gendron (see Le Monde 1974). The conclusions were startling. T w o thirds o f the anglophone workers were able to work exclusively in English, and of recent immigrants one half became bilingual in English and only 30 percent in French. The anglophone was much more likely than a francophone to find a j o b in which he could use only his own language, especially the higher one rose in the hierarchy ofjobs that demanded greater responsibility and paid more money. Upon a visit to Montreal, Jean Daniel recounted that in response to his admiration of the city's modernity, a French Canadian said: "It was not we who conceived and realized it, all the signs are in English, we are not at home in our own country. " And another observed that were he to take off his tie and wear a dirty shirt and enter a department store he would automatically be addressed in French. 26 On a psychological level, the minority complex of young French Canadians, particularly among males, according to a number o f studies, manifested itself in a lower "achievement motivation" as compared to their English counterparts, and a consensus among them that English males tended to be more dependable, kindly, ambitious, tall, good-looking and possessed of more "character" (Lambert 1970). French Canadian women tended to accept this pejorative stereotype of their own men folk. And Jean-Charles Falardeau described French Canadian novelists as producing a "literature o f purgatory", as rebels against their traditional society but unsure of what to substitute for it (Chantai et al. 1969, " T h e Contemporary Novel in French Canada", pp. 53-71). They expressed in their novels, according to him, a sense o f void and o f vertigo. The linguistic threat o f English in Quebec was formidable, both from Le Nouvel Observateur (October 26, 1970, pp. 20-3). This feeling o f persecution, one dating back no doubt to England's conquest o f Canada in 1763, was not always consonant with realities. The government in Ottawa tried to distribute national funds equitably and the role o f French in general affairs had increased in importance. Jean Egen, op. cit., observed that, paradoxically, the most devastating account o f the "colonized" status o f French Canadians was a report by a commission established by the Federal government and published by the " Q u e e n ' s " printer in Ottawa, the " B and B report". 26

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the English Canadians proper and from the neighboring United States. While about two million French Canadians had over the years emigrated to the United States (to become slowly assimilated), immigration into Canada was mainly English (about 75,000 yearly). During 1958-1972 the proportion of francophone immigrants dropped from 6.3 percent to 3.1 percent - that of anglophones rose from 51.3 percent to 63.2 percent. In spite of the law providing for use of both languages, the army was almost completely run in English - 31 percent of Canadian francophones were bilingual, only 4 percent of the anglophones were. 27 The French of Canada suffered greatly from franglais - a common sign in Quebec was pas de flanage instead of defense de stationner, char was used for automobile. Auguste Viatte reported he had heard a garage mechanic once say, "Bâchez votre char contre la tank, on va vous mettre du gaz".28 According to René de Chantal, Dean of Letters at the University of Montreal, 27

Burney (1962, pp. 40-4). T h e pressure of francophone "nationalism" however, altered the picture in subsequent years. Following the appointment of a Royal C o m m i s s i o n on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in 1965 and the enactment of the official Language Act of 1969, it became mandatory for civil servants in areas in which there were sizable numbers of French speakers to learn French. "It is not unusual these days", a Reuters correspondent reported (The International Herald Tribune, January 18, 1972), " f o r anyone looking for a federal civil servant [in O t t a w a ] to be told: 'Sorry he's at French'." According to the less optimistic Canadian Report on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, n e w c o m e r s to Canada were m o r e rapidly absorbed into the anglophone than into the francophone world — 93 percent of immigrants w h o changed to another language did so into English (1967-1970, I: pp. 22-3), even in Quebec. T h e Report estimated that b y 1981,90 percent of all Canadians (to 58 percent in 1961) would speak English (I: p. 25). When the study was made, bilingualism was more a pious h o p e than a legal reality, and francophones outside Quebec were clearly at a disadvantage in almost all spheres of economic and public life in Canada — even o n the top social and economic levels in Montreal where francophones needed t o learn English while the converse was not true (I: pp. 47-69). A repeated complaint of a francophone was: "I have to hang u p m y language with m y coat w h e n I go to w o r k " . See volumes II and lllpassim. In the capital, O t t a w a , English predominated to such an extent that francophones justly felt they belonged to an underprivileged linguistic minority (I: p. 27). T h e " B and B r e p o r t " came out solidly for the extension and, where possible, the enforcement of bilingualism in Canada. 28 La Francophone 1969, p. 187. French Canadian argot was called "Jouai", a corruption of cheval. Jouai was a mainly urban p h e n o m e n o n . Rural French had its o w n characteristics and was free f r o m anglicisms. T h e fact o f j o u a l constituted a dilemma for s o m e Canadian francophone creative writers, as was the case mutatis mutandis for creative writers w h o s e people spoke créole o r whose languages were diglossie. T h e dilemma was whether to write in standard educated French or in the everyday language of the people w h o s e world one attempted t o recreate imaginatively. Some writers to experiment with the use o f j o u a l in the years 1964-1965 and after were Jacques Godbout, Michel T r e m b l a y and Victor-Lévy Beaulieu. This experiment might represent m o r e of a " m o m e n t " in Quebec's search for identity than a permanent feature. According to Jacques Cellard, in any case, education, radio and television, favored "central French" over Joual. See Le Monde (1974).

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Canadian French in the seventeenth century, because of the intermingling of Frenchmen of different provenances, became m o r e u n i f o r m and standardized than its metropolitan counterpart, but then failed to develop further, o n a mass level, as metropolitan French did (op. cit.). French Canadians in the twentieth century still used w o r d s n o w obsolete in France - "fiable" for "digne de confiance", and " e n f a r g u e r " for "entraver", for example — and he adopted coined w o r d s u n k n o w n in France - " p o u d r e r i e " for "rafale de neige", " b r u m a n t e " for "crépuscule". F r o m English Canadian French had adapted words such as " o p p o r t u n i t é " instead of "occasion", " a p p o i n t m e n t " (for "rendez-vous") and even structural f o r m s such as "appartenir une m a i s o n " [own a house]. Roland Lorrain in his novel La Mort de mon Jouai: histoire incroyable d'un Canadien français décidé à parler bien, satirized the hold of jouai - a m a n bent on only speaking correct French meets with so much antagonism that the only j o b he can get is that of a ballet dancer. Serious efforts were made by the government of Q u e b e c - t h r o u g h the language office of the Quebec Ministry of Education - to combat franglais. Posters and pamphlets were issued to correct c o m m o n errors in French in various fields of h u m a n activity. O n e pamphlet on insurance, for example, insisted that the maturity of a policy should be referred to as "l'échéance", not " u n check-up" (International Herald Tribune, April 26, 1973). A m o n g the French Canadians there were three main political tendencies in regard to what almost all considered to be their unfair treatment at the hands of anglophones. First, the majority tendency, as represented b y the Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was to maintain the federal system of Canada and, within it, to develop Q u e b e c economically and socially as well as to guarantee her fair and just role within the federation. Trudeau's was a Swiss-type approach. 2 9 As his first names suggested, he was heir to both Canadian worlds. H e was b r o u g h t up bilingually, studied in Paris, as well as at Harvard and in London. He was a co-founder of Cité Libre, the journal that did m u c h to help end the political stanglehold of Duplessis' Union Nationale in Quebec. Believing that Quebec already had the political opportunities to right her wrongs, he considered Separatism as regressive economically and culturally, guilty of a " w i g w a m c o m p l e x " and n o more "revolutionary" than the Nazi movement. H e even turned Frantz Fanon, a hero of the y o u n g Separatists, 29

For his views see T r u d e a u (1968), and Cité Libre, a periodical he edited for m a n y years, especially the issue of April 1962, which was devoted t o the question of Separatism, in which his o w n contribution is " L a Nouvelle T r a h i s o n des Clercs", pp. 3-16.

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against the movement by quoting the Martinique revolutionary on the subject of "false national consciousness" (Trudeau 1968, pp. 211-12). Trudeau was also opposed to any "special powers" for Quebec, because this would tend to weaken Quebec's bargaining power in Ottawa. While highly critical of anglophones for favoring a monolingual Canada, he also attacked francophones whom "an excessive preoccupation with the future o f the language has made . . . forget the future of the man speaking it" (ibid., p. 7). Quebec "nationalism" would be economically ruinous, he felt — the logic that held that every linguistic minority should be independent would, he believed, cause havoc in Canada, as it would in countries like India. A nationality, he insisted, only needed "sovereignty" when all other courses of action were blocked. Trudeau's ideological mentors were Tocqueville, Montesquieu, and Lord Acton. Other French Canadians who agreed with Trudeau, in the need to preserve Canada, were André Laurendau and Gérard Pelletier. And they agreed also that the anglophones must become aware o f the fact that Canada was experiencing a social revolution through the influences o f industrialization, urbanization and the spread o f the mass media, or pay the price. Jean Marchand, a trade union leader, objected to those who thought Quebec could logically think o f leaving the Confederation until she had become much more modernized and economically developed (Scott and Oliver 1964, pp. 152-6), a sentiment not incompatible with Trudeau's. All the French Canadians in the collection by Frank Scott and Michael Oliver, including these more moderate voices, insisted, when separatist talk peaked in the early sixties, that the English Canadians could only ignore the new sense o f identity, as a nationality, o f the French Canadians, at their peril. A second political tendency among French Canadians was represented by the FLQ, as indicated, but this was a small minority, not because it favored independence, but because it advocated the method of violence. By 1975 terrorist tactics appeared to have been abandoned. The militant temperament was represented by men like André Major, an independent poet whose rhetoric was full o f terms like "alienation", "empty middleclass culture", "colonized middle class", "a dominated language group" and "Anglo-American capitalism" (ibid., pp. 73-83). The Manifesto o f the FLQ o f April 1963 demanded social revolution as well as independence. "Quebec is a colony!" it proclaimed, with 80 percent o f its economy controlled by the English (ibid., pp. 83-7). A third political tendency was represented by the Quebec Party which

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obtained 23 percent of the votes in the Quebec provincial elections of 1970. The leader, René Levesque, was convinced that through the ballot-box and persuasion sooner or later he would be able to lead a majority of his fellow French Canadians to opt, legally, for independence (see interview in Le Monde, October 25—6, 1970). When Minister of National Resources of Quebec, while not closing the door to "true confederacy", Levesque insisted that Quebec was a "true nation", but one threatened with denationalization, uncertainty, and disorientation. It no longer wanted to be a quaint "museum", and he dismissed the "B and B " report as of little significance because now Quebec was concerned with its own progress, not with "biculturalism". Others who argued along the same lines were Daniel Johnson in 1963 and Jean Lesage, at the time Quebec's premier. O n e attempt to assess French Canadian opinion in depth in regard to Separatism was made, in 1963, by the Social Research Group of Montreal, Canada, through a sampling of one thousand French speakers of Quebec province. 30 Several interesting points emerged: favoring separatism were a few over 12 percent, undecided were 22.5 percent, and opposed were 43 percent. But 46.1 percent believed that the Separatist movement had done more than any other movement to awaken the Québécois to their problems. The most important problem (45.9 percent) was felt to be unemployment, but the second (22.8 percent) was felt to be the problem of bilingualism. Toward solving Quebec's problems, 30.1 percent felt Separatist agitation helped, 26.7 percent felt it was harmful. To the question whether individual income would go down with separation, 38.6 percent said it would remain the same, 9.9 percent that it would rise, 18.8 percent that it would fall — 46 percent felt chances for individual advancement would remain about the same with separation; only 11.1 percent felt they would be better off. Most francophone Québécois, one might have concluded, revealed a provincial cultural nationalism, but in the spheres of politics and economics they were cautious and realistic. But considering the results of elections subsequent to the study one would have to conclude that separatist feelings were still very much alive, even if the methods of violence were rejected. 30

T h i s study was published in Maclean's Magazine, N o v e m b e r 2, 1963. I have seen the original statistical s u m m a r i e s entitled " O p i n i o n s sur le séparatisme" (August 1963) in typed f o r m , courtesy of Professor Peter D o d d w h o participated in the research study. T h e very interesting and revealing data gathered in this study are only indicated partially and in s u m m a r y here. Scott and Oliver (1964), in their preface, w e r e sceptical of the i m p o r t a n c e of this survey o n the g r o u n d s that the situation was " t o o f l u i d " for this type of statistical evaluation.

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General elections in Canada in October 1972, which almost led to the defeat of Pierre Trudeau's Liberal Party, suggested to some observers that Quebec's link to the rest of Canada was weaker than expected. One factor operating against Trudeau was resentment over his pro-bilingual policies in some of the anglophone provinces even if the factor of unemployment was the more crucial. O n the eve of the elections the Liberals held 147 seats out of a total of 264, while n o w they held only 109 to 107 for the Conservatives, and the largest bloc came from Quebec (56 of 74 seats). Doubtless many Québécois agreed with René Levesque, leader of the separatist Parti Québécois (which won a quarter of the votes in Quebec's 1970 provincial election) that anglophone Canada had now clearly shown its hostility to Trudeau's conciliatory efforts to weld Canadian unity, and that the case of separation had now been strengthened. In October 1973, the Liberals won, in Quebec's provincial elections, 101 of the 110 seats, on the surface a tremendous victory. The Quebec Party only obtained 7 seats and Levesque, as in 1970, was defeated in his own constituency. But the Liberal success was due in part to the anglophone vote - this 20 percent of the population voted predictably against Separatism. And the vote for the Quebec Party was 30 percent of the total (836,752 to the Liberals' 1,513,897). While Trudeau fairly described the election as a victory for his point of view, Separatism had by no means been eliminated as an important factor. In Canada as a whole, Trudeau's victory in the national elections in July 1974 (with 140 seats, a majority of 7) once again indicated that his position depended upon Quebec's vote - in the anglophone provinces, the Conservative Party attracted a majority of the votes. To compound Trudeau's difficulties, Quebec's Prime Minister, Robert Bourassa, supposedly Trudeau's ideological ally, in order not to have to depend so heavily on the anglophone votes in his province, and to meet autonomist sentiments even among his own francophone supporters, was led to adopt measures embarrassing to a Canadian Prime Minister whose main support came from Quebec, and who against much anglophone hostility, was trying to make bilingualism in Canada a reality. Particularly embarrassing was Bourassa's introduction, in March 1974, of a bill which makes French the "official" language of Quebec. In so doing Bourassa was not going further than Ontario already had in regard to English, and the phrasing of the bill was moderate enough to cause Separatists, some insisting on the abolition of all English language instruction in Quebec, to refer to it sarcastically as "Bill 22" (in English). Bill 22 stated, for example,

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that any official document in Q u e b e c "may" be accompanied b y an English version, and French w a s declared to be the " p r e f e r r e d " language o f the province, but not the only language. B u t even so, Bill 22 alarmed anglophone Canadians as it delighted the French government which (in return for cooperation in the field o f uranium which Q u e b e c possesses) signed a " c h a r t e r " providing aid to help gallicize Q u e b e c ' s terminology in technical and commerical fields, and so help implement the bill. This agreement was made during Bourassa's visit to France in December 1974, only two months after a visit b y Trudeau had apparently produced little agreement beyond polite platitudes. Other regulations in 1975 provided that children o f immigrants whose first language was neither English nor French, attend French schools, and that any Q u e b e c student w h o s e knowledge of English was inadequate also attend French schools. Another law, proposed in the s u m m e r o f 1975, provided that all placards used by demonstrators be in French or in French and "another language". Menus, wine lists and food labels were to be in French as f r o m 1976. 31 While many Frenchmen might have been delighted by such measures, it needed to be observed that French Canadian identity was regional and by no means implied an uncritical identification with France herself. O n e still-lingering characteristic o f French Canadian " n a t i o n a l i s m " w a s a reserved attitude toward France both because o f its anti-clerical policies and because o f a feeling that in history France had betrayed the French Canadians at the Treaty o f Paris o f 1763, and then abandoned them. B u t since de Gaulle's visit and his famous, or infamous, tribute to " f r e e Q u e b e c " , feelings for the " h e x a g o n " became warmer. O n a less dramatic plane, the beginning o f the rapprochement o f the two peoples may be said to have begun on N o v e m b e r 12, 1964, when the then Prime Minister of Q u e b e c , Jean Lesage (a Liberal), met General de Gaulle to discuss, inter alia, matters o f educational reform and financial assistance. This meeting was followed by agreements signed on February 12 and N o v e m b e r 25,1965, to facilitate educational exchanges — agreements Ottawa condoned (see Balous 1970, pp. 115-23). A Commission Permanente de Coopération Franco-Québécoise was established. It met yearly under, originally, the

Richard Tucker and others wondered if such legislation might not militate against francophones who, by remaining monolingual while anglophones were becoming bilingual, would be at a disadvantage in the employment market.

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chairmanship of Jean Basdevant and Claude Morin (Under-Secretary for Provincial Affairs). Following de Gaulle's spectacular visit in 1967, an agreement was made on September 14, 1967, providing for various educational and cultural exchanges, the increase of French scholarships to Quebec from 145 to 1,000 and the setting up of chairs of French Canadian civilization in French universities. In 1968 a French conseiller culturel was appointed to Quebec (city) and an attaché culturel to Montreal. The number of French professors increased from 110 (1965) to 623 (1968), and technical missions of cooperation from 15 to 450. With patriotic enthusiasm, Suzanne Balous wrote: 1964—1968 is, in a sense, a peaceful revenge for the defeat of 1759 [the Battle of the Plains o f Abraham] and o f the Treaty o f 1763, through the vigorous reaffirmation o f the French fact in N o r t h America after an eclipse which had, without doubt, much contributed, at the time, to w o r l d disequilibrium (1970, p. 123).

After his electoral victory in 1970, Robert Bourassa declared to Le Monde that the French Canadians, swimming in a sea of over two hundred million anglophones, needed to maintain close cultural links with France (he did not expect economic assistance to amount to very much). 32 But he probably put off French readers by concluding: "Definitely, Quebec must itself resolve the particular problem it has, that is of uniting French culture which is the most prestigious in the world, with North American technology which, in turn, is the most advanced in the world. This synthesis, this marriage of French culture and of American technology, is the future of Quebec." Significantly, Quebec tended to be less hostile to American investments than was anglophone Canada. About 75 percent of Quebec's foreign trade was with the United States, and over half of Quebec's industry was controlled directly or indirectly by the United States. It was not strange that to a French audience Bourassa would say Quebec needed French aid to preserve its culture against "l'envahissement culturel améric a i n " (Le Monde

Diplomatique

1 9 7 5 , p. 2 3 ) .

As Quebec did not intend to rely only on French assistance for its economic development, it did not look exclusively to France as guarantor of her political identity. She also looked to the francophone part of the world in general as revealed by the active role — a role not always to France's taste - that she played in various international bodies (the Agence 32

LeMonde (August 6,1970). Bourassa opposed separation for economic as well as ideological reasons. He observed, for example, that Quebec enjoyed the fixed price on oil produced in Western Canada.

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de Coopération in particular). 33 Linguistically and culturally, however, Quebec remained France's most important ally in the Americas. 3 4 While the French language played an important role as a language of culture and as a tool for purposes such as diplomacy, and travel, it obviously presented a problem of identity for very few Americans including those of francophone origin. But in the period after World War II, as regionalism became a widespread p h e n o m e n o n in the Western world, and as minorities began to question whether it was w o r t h y or useful to sacrifice their heritages in the American melting-pot, some francophone Americans, in Louisiana in particular, began to reassert the French c o m ponent of their sense of identity and while certainly not concerned with establishing a French "nation", they did become intent upon reviving French culture in their midst and educating their children bilingually. In this section after a brief purview of the status of the French language in the U n i t e d States, w e consider the effort of the small francophone region of Louisiana, concentrated in and around the city of Lafayette, to revive and to preserve its French identity. As a language of culture, French played more than a negligible role in the United States, even if, as Henri Peyre observed, its presence was overly p r o m o t e d in the Ivy League schools and insufficiently in the nation as a whole. 3 5 While in high schools, the preferred optional foreign language m i g h t be Spanish (in 1968 it was picked by 1,548,576 students), French came second (picked in 1968 by 1,337,806 students); 3 6 on a university level, 33

F o l l o w i n g the d e p a r t u r e of General de Gaulle f r o m power, the French g o v e r n m e n t m o d e r a t e d its policies t o w a r d Q u e b e c to C a n a d a ' s satisfaction. In 1970 President P o m p i d o u limited himself to referring t o " t h e particular preoccupation that France cannot help but have . . . w i t h what is called 'the French fact' in C a n a d a " (The Internationa! Herald Tribune, O c t o b e r 22, 1970). 34 Oliver T o d d , in Newsweek (October 28, 1974, p. 29) suggested that France should take federal Canada m u c h m o r e seriously than it did and not see it only as an exploiter of F r e n c h m e n overseas. Quebec, in turn, w o u l d n o t o v e r c o m e its provinciality culturally until "it completely stops squinting at Paris". Similarly, Alain-Marie Carron, introducing Le Monde's special issue on Q u e b e c (1974) stated: "Limited to itself, Q u e b e c lives a cyclical history, in a circular time, and will continue t o d o so until the attraction of wealth and the effects of a diminished birth-rate dissolve it into the t i m e of o t h e r s . " A distinguished Belgian French language patriot w r o t e : "Le Canada français est n o t r e bastion américain" (Becquet 1963, p. 163). 35

" A u x É t a t s - U n i s " (Esprit 1962, pp. 702-10). For a full chronological account of French instruction in the U n i t e d States to 1963 see Watts (1963). 36 Balous (1970, pp. 165-8). Needless to say, m a n y students in the U n i t e d States probably studied French in a p e r f u n c t o r y manner only t o satisfy language requirements - there was little f o l l o w - u p in life after school.

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it was selected by 37 percent of the students with German second (22 percent). There were 266 Alliance centers in the country and three private lycées (in J. Jew York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles). There were, in 1968, 541 Fulbright exchanges provided to professors of either nationality to work in the other's country. According to Pierre Burney, even if Montparnasse was no longer the "literary capital of the United States" (as John L. Brown once called it), there were, in 1961, about 10,000 American professors of the French language (1962, p. 46). If nothing else, snobbism kept French teaching a healthy industry in the United States as it did even when General de Gaulle ruffled the eagle's feathers, and, a cartoon would have it, was considering asking for the return of the Statue of Liberty. In 1974 publicity was given to Philippe Alméras, a professor at the University of Colorado, and France's Cassandra in America, who w o n dered if French overseas might not be as subject to sacrifice as Latin had once been in a world becoming increasingly more democratic, and industrial, particularly with the spread of English as the leading language of international communication (Le Monde, January 10, 1974). He was alarmed by a survey made by the Modern Language Association which showed that the number of students studying French in the United States had dropped between 1970-1972 by 18.4 percent, while Spanish had only decreased by 6.3 percent (only Russian had increased, by 0.6 percent). In total numbers French now was second to Spanish (293,084 in grammar and high schools for French, to 364,531 for Spanish). He explained the relative success of Spanish as due to the propinquity of Spanish-speaking nations to the United States, and to the fact that 9,178,000 Americans were of Spanish origin (to 5,420,000 of French origin). And he explained the relative decline of interest in French as due to the fact that Spanish seemed easier to learn for many Americans, particularly since speaking Spanish poorly did not arouse the same complexes as speaking bad French. Interest in all foreign languages had declined in the United States ever since the hysteria over Sputnik, which inspired the National Defense Education Act o f 1958, subsided. In J u n e 1974, t h e Haut Comité de la Langue

Française

organized a conference in Monroe, Virginia on the subject of French in the United States, which produced a two hundred page analysis confirming that while French held its own in some states (especially in New England and along the East Coast), in many states Spanish was rapidly gaining ground. 3 7 37

Irving Marder in The International Herald Tribune, December 4, 1974. This was popularly known as the "Pedlar Farm Report" f r o m the site of the conference.

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In 1940 there were 1,412,060 citizens in the United States whose first language was French, 36 percent of w h o m were born of parents already in the country. In this year states where francophones were more than 50,000 were Connecticut, Michigan, New York and Rhode Island. They were more than 100,000 in Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts and N e w Hampshire (Kloss 1970, pp. 57, 74—5). The bulk were in N e w England, but the largest grouping was in Louisiana (298,420), and in New England, except for some of the more well-to-do families, since World War II, French, once preserved as a shield of religious identity, was giving way to rapid assimilation (Fishman ed. 1966, "Franco-American Efforts on Behalf of the French Language in New England", H - B Lemaire). In 1969 schools with French as a medium of instruction included four in N e w York (one the Lycée Français founded in 1935), two in San Francisco, one in each of the following: Washington, D.C., Boston, and Los Angeles. Most were partly subsidized by the French government. In 1970 radio stations broadcasting three hours or more a week in French included: seven in New England, eight in Louisiana, three in Texas, two in Indiana and one in each of the following: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, N e w Mexico and Washington, D.C. But it was only in the case of Louisiana that the French linguistic density constituted a basis for a sense of group identity. Speaking for his fellow natives of the bayou country Colin Gravois, in a personal note, stated that French had been the dominant language he had grown up with toward the end of World War II (International Herald Tribune, June 16, 1972). But with post-war prosperity matters changed French became unfashionable and strong pressures rose to encourage conformity to the American cultural pattern. Returning to the bayou in 1975, however, he was surprised to find that the pendulum had swung, and that in Louisiana French was experiencing a "renaissance". This "renaissance", a French visitor observed, involved a new pride on the part of the "Cajuns" in their French heritage, and had led many of them to question the values of the melting-pot, to consider that it was now "elegant" to speak French, and to press for bilingualism (Culture Française 1974, Winter, 4, pp. 17—31, "Les Etats Unis et la Renaissance du Français en Louisiane", F. Edwar Herbert). Louisiana's francophones included the original créoles who had entered the United States with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Acadians who left Canada after the Seven Years War, Blacks, and "métis" mixed up with the first two groups. T o 1864 most governors of Louisiana had been francophone, and until the Civil War (when most francophones favored

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secession) Louisiana was entirely and officially bilingual. The Constitutions o f 1864 and 1921, however, reversed this situation and English became the sole official language, even if acts and contracts remained as binding in French as in English (after 1855). While private contacts had been made with Quebec as early as 1930, it was not until after World War II, as indicated, and not until the sixties, that the francophones o f Louisiana were inspired to emphasize their French identity once again, largely under the inspiration of James Domengeaux. In 1967-1968 the State Senate and House adopted a resolution in favor of close ties with "Canada and its provinces" (that is Quebec and New Brunswick), and a fifty-man commission was established to promote the French language under the inevitable presidency o f James Domengeaux. This was the Comité pour le Développement du Français en Louisiane (CODIFIL). In 1969-1970 it was provided that every public grammar school in the State had to teach French for the first five years, beginning with the first year, unless a county should specifically request not to. Other laws provided that public television had to be partly bilingual and Télévision-Louisiane was established as a French medium in collaboration with the Institute o f French Studies o f the Southwestern University in Lafayette. This Institute was concerned with research into French history and language. In addition a radio program, "La Semaine en Français" was set up. Quebec sent a permanent representative to Lafayette in 1969 (Léo Le Blanc) and CODIFIL sent an observer to the second Niamey Conference in 1970. In April 1972 an International Congress of French-speaking Americans was held in the city with representatives from several francophone states including France. Quebec and the Agence were also represented. "Soyons fiers de parler français" was one of the slogans at the occasion. At this time fifty French military volunteers were helping to teach French in Louisiana's elementary schools, part of the successful campaign o f James Domengeaux, to promote bilingualism. Le Monde's correspondent, sceptical about the future o f French in the State, nevertheless was impressed by the fact that the governor, for the first time, was both a Catholic and a francophone, Edwin Roberts (April 19, 1972). By the late sixties no student studied French in the public schools o f Louisiana; by 1974, 40,000 did. In the public system, the French government (in 1975) provided 290 coopérants and was financing 200 Louisiana professors to spend six weeks in training programs in France (Le Monde, April 6-7,1975, and June 13,1975). One estimate was that of the 3,600,000

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citizens o f Louisiana, 1,500,000 were able to speak French in 1975. On July 4, 1974 a big jamboree was held in New Orleans, a precedent for the future. Many Louisianians were now uninhibitedly proud of their partly French identity. While in North America then, French Canadians, and to a less serious extent, Louisianians, saw in French an identity shield, in South America, fully Spanish or Portuguese linguistically, except for French Guiana, 38 French could only hope to serve, in the form o f a second language in education, as a possible counter to the intrusions of English. When General de Gaulle made his spectacular trip to several South American countries in 1964, he was greeted with great enthusiasm and many felt that a long-standing link between the Latins, one dating back to their almost synchronous revolutions in the early part o f the nineteenth century, would be given a new vitality. 39 T o South America, as Suzanne Balous stated with exaggeration but also with some truth, the France o f de Gaulle represented". . . the spirit o fnational independence, cooperation on the basis o f equality, a balance between liberalism and statism (étatisme), an attachment to humanism and to Latinity" (1970, p. 158). Besides hopes for financial aid (France did increase its aid by 69 percent - from 24 million francs in 1964 to 42 million in 1967), many South Americans doubtlessly saw in a "renewed" France a defense against the formidable American cultural presence. In fact, the French cultural investment rose from 2.5 million francs to 4.6 million between 1964 and 1967, and many new cultural agreements were signed between France and South American republics (ibid., pp. 158-65). In 1969 Suzanne Balous could boast that the study o f French was obligatory for at least three hours a week in the following countries: Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Venezuela (in the Arts) and 38

Guiana's population included 3 3 , 0 0 0 Creoles, 6 , 0 0 0 whites, 5 , 0 0 0 Indians and Bonis

(descendants o f runaway slaves) in 1975. T h i s colony - a department since 1946 had a sad historical reputation. O n c e called the " W h i t e M a n ' s G r a v e y a r d " after the malaria epidemic o f 1763 killed thousands, it served as a penal colony after 1848 until W o r l d W a r II, and was h o m e o f the notorious prison o f Devil's Island. Inflation and other e c o n o m i c woes had helped arouse inflammatory talk o f independence, b y 1975, with Leopold Heder's Guianan Socialist Party and G u y Lamaze's Guianan M o v e m e n t for Decolonization. T h e French hoped to counter such m o m e n t s b y developing a paper industry in the region and were encouraging Frenchmen to immigrate. Culturally, while r e m o t e and provincial, Guiana did have a lycée (in Cayenne), with about 1,500 students, and it had produced t w o talented writers, Léon D a m a s and Bertene J u m i n e r . 39

O n e might mention as another link Auguste C o m t e ' s philosophy o f Positivism which

has had an extraordinary influence in Brazil and M e x i c o in particular.

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the Dominican Republic. In other countries it was an optional possibility. The number of French professors teaching in South America in 1969 was 639 (to 261 in 1960). There were fifteen French high schools on the continent and many institutes, one of the most important being the Institut d'Amérique Latine du Mexique with 5,100 members inscribed. In 1968,2,478 South Americans were on scholarships to France as academic students or as technical trainees. Forty Latin American stations, both television and radio, offered French language courses. It was evident from this summary that the hold of French was surprisingly strong, particularly in Venezuela, Uruguay, and part of Central America. But it was also evident that English, particularly in the sciences, was considered to be much too important to sacrifice to "Latinity" in a country like Venezuela, for example. This was precisely what Georges Manigley observed of the situation in 1962. Even in 1969, when Suzanne Balous could boast of de Gaulle's impact, in Brazil, English was the leading second language in schools, as it was in Mexico, Peru and Venezuela (Esprit 1962, pp. 711-22, "En Amérique du Sud"). South Americans, in short, tended to see English as the language of efficacy, French as a language of cultural identity (a sort of Latin for modern times), but in spite of a resentment of the colossus to the North, English was increasingly making inroads as efficacy was preferred over a "Latinity" suspected of having had its days of glory but of now tending to relative decline. While French aid had been increased, compared to American aid in the vast sea of Latin America, it was hardly more than a drop. The temptation of the dollar as well as of modernity remained crucial challenges to "Latinity", after the dramatic splurge of de Gaulle's visit. As identity shield the "renaissance" of French in Louisiana hardly threatened disruption in the vast United States. O n the contrary, it could only serve to add a new cultural dimension to this small group of Americans who had opted for bilingualism. In the case of parts of South America where, for a brief period General de Gaulle had aroused the prospect of adding a new weapon to the cultural armoury of defence against the Northern colossus, national identity was not an issue - the French language was, rather, a symbol of relatively minor moment, in the effort of linguistically Latin peoples to enrich identities they already possessed. Quite different was the case of Quebec. Here the issues were more deeply visceral, at the very core of the sense of national identity, a factor threatening the disruption of a great nation, and a factor that might inspire the

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future rise of a new nation. And in Lebanon, although not so crucial an identity factor, the French language was one symbol among others of a way of life which, in 1975, seemed threatened, if not with extinction, certainly with a metamorphosis, through violence and sad historical fortune.

CHAPTER 5

French as Problematic

"It is easier Molière."

to

resist

Massu

than

Malek Haddad

Elsewhere rejected or clung to, in North Africa the French language constituted, after independence, a problematic. It did so in the sense that in the three nations of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, leaders who had sought independence in order to reassert a national identity that was Arab were often reluctant to forfeit the French heritage which had become so deeply rooted in their midst, both for practical and for affective reasons. President Senghor of Senegal once observed that while he understood the preoccupation of the North Africans with Arabic and with arabization, they were nevertheless "obliged", if they wished to work toward African unity, to remain bilingual and to continue to promote French. 1 This advice from one decolonizing leader to others was significant in that their mutual quests for national identity were the same, but it said more about Senegal's options than about North Africa's. North Africans were, of course, concerned with their relations with African countries, and often spoke of the African dimension of their identity. However, more important to them viscerally, historically, and culturally, were their relations with another part of the world, the Arab Middle East. And unlike many Africans, they had a readier alternative to French, in the Arabic language, than did their African counterparts. While for a long time Black Africans might have to swallow their national pride and continue to use the language of the colonizer for want of a convenient and ready alternative, a subject discussed in the next chapter, 1

Painchaud (1972, p. 30). Quoted from Unité Africaine (Paris, 1966), and Le (October 15, 1966).

Devoir

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Problematic

the matter was qualitatively different for the Arabs to their north (the states of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco). Arabic was a highly developed language, bearer of the rich heritage of a civilization which once, in the sphere of science, was superior to that of the West and from which, in large part, Greek philosophy (Aristotle in particular) came to the West. In the ninth century, Catholic bishops in Spain deplored the lure of Arabic culture among Spanish "Mozarabs", those who adopted the Arabic language and lifestyle, just as in the nineteenth century Muslim elders were to denounce the lure of Paris to Muslim youths. By the end of World War II, Arabic, with varying degrees of success was being used as the medium of instruction, in cinema and radio, and as the language of administration in most of the sister Arab nations of the Middle East.2 By 1974 Arabic had become an official language of the United Nations (at the expense of the Arab governments). During the struggle against colonialism, a considerable part of the impulse to independence, or at least an important symbol of this impulse, was the desire to restore the Arabic language, the sacred language of these predominantly Muslim people, against a colonizer who had to a considerable degree alienated élites through French education and disparaged and undermined Arabic as a vehicle of culture indirectly and sometimes even deliberately.3 Illustra2

T h a t Arabic was developing into a language quite suitable for purposes of m o d e r n i t y , in spite of p r o b l e m s such as the " p u r i s m " of m a n y academicians and religious leaders in regard to b o r r o w i n g foreign t e r m s and in spite of diglossia, has been s h o w n b y Stetkevych (1970). A m o d e r n Arabic taking a " t h i r d - r o a d " b e t w e e n the classical and the various colloquial languages, was changing in structure (and so spirit, o r because of a change in spirit) t o j o i n the large "supragenealogical family of Western culture-bearing languages". This language, of n e w s p a p e r m e n and of m o d e r n writers, a m o n g others, exhibited s o m e of the f o l l o w i n g : verbal and nominal sentences were ceasing t o be the main syntactical characteristics o f the language; the o r d e r of sentences was n o t dictated b y meaning-stress, and sentences w e r e b e c o m i n g richer in subordinate clauses. In the process m o d e r n Arabic w o u l d "replace dialects w i t h o u t artificially suppressing t h e m " . T h i s language, in turn, w o u l d replace alfusha, the classical, w h i c h was the vehicle of expression for a great culture but n o l o n g e r reflected c o n t e m p o r a r y life. Salama M o u s s a " A r a b i c Language P r o b l e m s " in B e n j a m i n Rivlin and Joseph S. Szyliowicz, eds., The Contemporary Middle East: Tradition and Innovation ( N e w York, 1965), pp. 325-8, has gone s o far as to prophesy the adoption of Latin characters to o v e r c o m e difficulties such as the absence o f v o w e l markings, but this w o u l d seem t o be extravagant, t o o disruptive of the Islamic heritage and feelings of the Arabs for w h o m Islam w a s an i m p o r t a n t c o m p o n e n t of national identity. T h e M u s l i m T u r k s did a d o p t the Latin alphabet, but T u r k i s h was n o t the language of the Koran. It m i g h t be n o t e d that t h e a d o p t i o n b y the Arabs of vernacular f o r m s of Arabic could p r o v e disruptive to the ideal of p a n A r a b i s m , since the vernaculars differed considerably f r o m region t o region in t h e vast Arab world. 3

E x p e r t s on the Arab w o r l d usually agreed that for the Arabs language was central to their sense of identity and perhaps Arabic w a s their chief pride as people. Berque (1964) s a w

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tive of the situation in Algeria, in particular, before independence, and to lesser but important extents in already independent Morocco and Tunisia (both independent in 1956), was the statement made by the novelist Malek Haddad in speeches around the world in 1961, "The French language is my exile", when he apologized to his audience for only being able to defend his people's cause in French. During the thirties, under the leadership of Sheikh Abd al-Hamid Ben Badis, the Association of the 'Ulema (Muslim elders) founded in 1931, attempted to counter the heavy pressures of French assimilationism by encouraging the revival of Arabic and the introduction, in their free schools, of the idea of Islamic reformism (islah) emanating from the Middle East (see Merad 1967). But, while Ben Badis had some success, it was mainly in French that the Revolution was fought. The goal, however, was the restoration of Arabic. In the Tripoli Program ofJune 1962, on the eve of independence, the Algerian revolutionaries restated, in regard to Arabic, what they had said in constant manifestos before: the role of the Revolution " . . . is above a l l . . . to restore to Arabic—the very expression of the cultural values of our country - its dignity and its efficacity as a language of civilization." 4 After independence, with the intention at least in rhetoric to realize a return to the past culture the colonizer had disparaged and attempted in vain to obliterate, the three North African states confronted the problem of language reform, of how and how rapidly to "arabize" their educational systems and their administration. The French imprint was enormous, and

Arabic, transformed from a language of the sacred into a language to serve modernity as the best way the Arabs had to reconcile modernity and authenticity (pp. 190, 201). This could be done, he felt, because of the "suprasensible references . . . communal values . . . infinite resources of v o c a b u l a r y . . . semantic flexibility" o f this language. A. S. Tritton saw Arabic as "the most basic component of Arab self-consciousness" quoted in G. E. von Grünebaum, Modem Islam: The Search for Identity (Berkeley, California, 1962, p. 8). And Vincent Monteil stated "Their nationalism (qawmiyyah) is above all linguistic and cultural" (L'Arabe modeme (Paris 1960, p. 356)). O f the Arab Revolt o f 1916, T. E. Lawrence remarked: " T h e master-key o f opinion lay in the common language: where also lay the key to imagination. Moslems whose mother tongue was Arabic looked upon themselves for that reason as a chosen people. Their heritage of the Koran and classical literature held the Arab-speaking peoples together. Patriotism, ordinarily of soil or race, was warped to a language" (1952, p. 344). 4 See Gordon (1962 and 1966), where these issues are discussed. The present chapter, thus, constitutes something of an aggiomamento. O f unusual excellence is the work of Gallagher (1966) which sees the language question as the crucial one in the North African dilemma as to identity and cultural future. He quotes Mistral as epigraph, " Q u i ten la lengo ten la claou".

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almost t o the same extent as in the African states, the French presence remained a crucial dimension of N o r t h African culture. A t the end of 1967, there were 20,016 French teachers contributing to help realize the French boast that French, once the language of the élite, was n o w also the language of the masses in all three states. In this year the following was the breakdown of the French educational and cultural presence in each of the states. In Tunisia there were 3,500 teachers, of w h o m 792 w o r k e d through the Section Universitaire et Culturelle de l'Ambassade, teaching 10,609 students in French schools of w h o m only 4,321 were French. According to the p r o tocol of April 30, 1965, which replaced that of O c t o b e r 1957, the Tunisian g o v e r n m e n t paid twice the amount for these teachers as did France. France ran 6 lycées, 24 primary schools, provided 2,800 teachers to the Tunisian national system and 100 professors on the university level. 5 France's total educational investment in Tunisia was 41 million francs. In Morocco, the French Mission Universitaire et Culturelle ran 8 lycées, 48 primary schools (teaching 27,508 students in all of w h o m only 12,777 were French), and it provided the Moroccan national system with 6,518 teachers. T h e bulk of the salaries of the latter (according to the protocol of September 1965) were paid by the Moroccan government. In addition, France ran six cultural centers, twelve cultural " f o y e r s " and ten audiovisual centers. In 1967 the total financial investment in M o r o c c o was 62.9 million francs. In 1973 there were still 80,000 Frenchmen in Morocco. In the cases of M o r o c c o and Tunisia, this was the situation a decade after independence. In the case of Algeria, the Office Universitaire et Culturelle Française ran six lycées and a n u m b e r of primary schools (for French children mainly) that in all served 15,000 students of w h o m 37 percent were Algerians. French teachers in the national system were 6,500 (of which 345 were in higher education). These latter were paid by the Algerian government but France supplemented their pay to raise it to 176.96 percent of the equivalent salaries in France. 6 This was the situation five years after independence. According to one estimate, the n u m b e r of N o r t h Africans w h o in 1964 could read French was 700,000 in Tunisia, one million in Algeria and 5

R e v e a l i n g w a s t h e fact that in 1967-1968 o f t h e 2,377 m o v i e films s h o w n in Tunisia, 25 p e r c e n t w e r e p r e s e n t e d in Arabic, 66 p e r c e n t in F r e n c h , a n d 9 p e r c e n t in t h e original w i t h F r e n c h subtitles (Le Monde Diplomatique, J u n e 1973, p. 16). 6 In 1970 t h e r e w e r e o v e r t w o million Algerian y o u t h s in school, b u t b y 1 9 7 5 - 1 9 7 6 s c h o o l i n g w a s p r o v i d e d t o a l m o s t f o u r million.

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800,000 in Morocco. 7 The number able to read classical Arabic was one million in Morocco, 300,000 in Algeria and 700,000 in Tunisia. As for speakers of dialectical Arabic, the figures were 11 million in Morocco (the rest only speak Berber dialects), 10 million in Algeria (the rest speak Berber dialects), and 4.5 million in Tunisia (Berber virtually did not exist here). Those who spoke French were 4 million in Morocco, 6 million in Algeria and 2 million in Tunisia. One observation of importance one might make was that while French, although making a good statistical showing as a spoken language, was somewhat inferior to Arabic as a written language in Morocco (only ruled as a protectorate since 1912), on a par with Arabic in Tunisia (ruled since 1881), and far superior to Arabic in Algeria (ruled since 1830). These figures did not show, however, what any visitor immediately observed: those who spoke and wrote French were usually those who were socially and politically in the front ranks of the pecking order - even though two of these states were committed to eventual total arabization, Morocco and Algeria. This proclaimed goal was still in 1975 very far from the reality which, on an educated level, tended to be one of bilingualism with French remaining the most important language for advancement in most spheres of public life. Of the three states, the most genuinely bilingual was Tunisia; Algeria the least. Conversely, it was Algeria which was the most vociferous in proclaiming its Arab Muslim identity, 8 and which, ironically - because of its central strategic importance, revolutionary prestige and its oil - had been most favored by France in terms of the amount of aid given, and the toleration shown over government actions hostile to France. When Algiers was seized in 1830 and the conquest of Algeria began, literacy in Arabic was around 40-50 percent but the methods and content of education in the elementary Koranic schools and the religious lodges 7

Gallagher (1966, p. 80). T h e relative populations in 1964 were about 13 million in Morocco, 10 million in Algeria and 4.5 million in Tunisia. According to Maghreb, Jan-Feb 1970, p. 36, those w h o were illiterate in Algeria in 1966 were 74.6 percent of the population; those literate only in Arabic, 5.5 percent; those literate in Arabic and French, 10.6 percent, and those literate in French only 8.9 percent. 8 Thus, Ramadan, the m o n t h of fasting during the day, was m o r e strictly enforced in Algeria than in the other t w o states — this in spite of her "socialist" orientation; and w o m e n were m o r e secluded in Algeria, and less free, than in Tunisia. See G o r d o n (1968). An uncompromising statement in favor of arabization was the book of O s m a n Sa'idi (1967), ambassador of Algeria to Baghdad. According to him the French cultural and linguistic presence was an "intellectual invasion" which limited Algeria's sovereignty and hindered the effort to establish Arabism and socialism. General de Gaulle was held responsible for seeking, after independence, to prevent Algeria f r o m recovering its Arab personality and destiny.

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were largely mnemonic and exclusively traditional and religious. 9 Over the years this system withered after the French seized the religious endowments for educational and religious purposes, and because of the indifference or hostility of the colons (the term I will use for the European settler in Algeria), especially after 1898 when they obtained effective budgetary control in Algeria. At this time the colons were about one half million to five or six millions Muslims. The Écoles Arabes-Françaises, established earlier to educate native children as well as French (in both languages), were phased out. 10 As a result by 1954, when the Revolution began, the ten percent of Muslim children in school received an education exclusively in French, while the limited Arabic taught in secondary school was taught half-heartedly and as a foreign language. Before 1962, the year of independence, even with the efforts of de Gaulle to help Algeria develop massively, only 14 percent of the Muslim children were in school, and at the University of Algiers there were only 557 Muslims to 4,548 Europeans. U p o n independence the élite was very small and educated almost exclusively in French. The language of the Revolution was largely French, and those w h o knew Arabic well, graduates of the three special French-run schools — the medersa (s) or madaris — which trained Muslim clerics, and of the some seventy free schools run by the reformist 'Ulema, were not in the mainstream of revolutionary leadership. With independence, both Ahmed Ben Bella and his successor in 1965, Houari Boumedienne, agreed on the need to reconquer Algeria's identity and to do so, primarily, through the arabization of the educational system. Ben Bella, however, was more tentative, less sure of the wisdom of sacrificing the French dimension of independent Algeria, while Boumedienne was more systematic and assertive, although not cataclysmic in any sense. From 1962 through 1975, on the principle that Arabic was both the national and the official language, and French a language to be used only temporarily and provisionally, arabization of the Algerian educational system was pursued. O n the level of primary school, seven of the weekly thirty hours in 1962 were given in Arabic (the rest, of course, in French) — of the 19,908 primary school teachers, only 3,452 taught in Arabic. By 1967 the first two years had been wholly arabized and 51 percent of primary school teachers taught 9

See Turin (1971) and Julien (1964). I owe a debt to my student, Jody Jaffe, for some of the material in the following paragraphs. See his work (1975). 10

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153

in Arabic. In 1971 the "punctual system" was adopted, that is arabizing all subjects on a given level rather than arabizing geographically or "vertically", one year at a time. The geographic solution would have led to inequalities of opportunity, it was felt, the "vertical" was impossible because of a lack of qualified teachers. In 1971 all literary subjects as well as mathematics were taught in Arabic (all the other subjects in French). By 1972 the public school system was arabized through the fourth year; by 1974 the whole system had been arabized. French, beginning in the third year was taught as a foreign language, and no teachers of French nationality served in primary school after this. On the level of secondary school - four years of intermediate and three extra years leading to the baccalauréat — matters moved more slowly, partly because of a lack of qualified teachers - in 1973, 3,800 teachers of French nationality taught in the secondary school system. Nevertheless, by 1974 all literary subjects were taught in Arabic and one third of the classes in science and mathematics had been arabized. In higher education, in the Arts, the licences in Arabic literature, philosophy and history had been arabized by 1968. In 1973, geography, sociology, and pedagogy were also arabized. In other subjects, 58 percent of the students were in arabized sections. In law (at the universities of Oran and Constantine as well as Algiers), by 1972-1973, 40 percent of the students were studying in Arabic for the licence en droit and it was obligatory for new students to work for this degree in Arabic. In the Sciences, the policy of arabization was more moderately applied. In 1973, only 19 percent of all students were in arabized sections, and medicine, economics and engineering continued to be taught in French. All students, however, studying in higher education were obliged to attend three hundred hours of lessons in Arabic, and a Permanent Committee for Arabization supervised the three universities. In 1972 there were 476 French professors teaching at these universities. Thus arabization was proceeding apace but by 1975 French had by no means been eliminated as a vehicle of education, although there were inevitable complaints that the standards had declined. In the sector of public administration, French still held its own, partly through inertia, and partly through the prejudice and the vested interest of the generation of administrators still in power through 1975, many of whom knew little or no Arabic. In 1964 a National School of Translation was established, and in 1968 it was decreed that all administrators had to prove competence in Arabic. But French remained the usual language of administration, and

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even in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, most directives were issued in French. The École National d'Administration continued to use French as medium of instruction. More successful was the arabization of the Ministry of Justice, the National Theater, radio and television. The Ministry of Information and Culture published two serious cultural journals — Al-Thaqqafa and Alwàn, and the newspaper Al-Sha'b in Arabic. But more widely read was El Moudjahid, in French, not to mention Le Monde, without doubt North Africa's most influential newspaper, one in which a wit suggested, not only did rebels propagandize their ideas through interviews, but in which Ministers made statements if they wished to be taken seriously. In 1975 there were 5,000 French coopérants in Algeria, 70 percent of whose salaries were paid by the Algerian government and the rest (78 million francs) by the French government. In all there were 57,000 French in Algeria, 10,000 of w h o m were colons w h o had not abandoned Algeria in 1962. O f the 3,437 professors in Algeria's system of higher education, 1,856 were foreigners, mostly French. 11 The Minister of Information and Culture, Ahmed Taleb, although a consistent preacher of arabization, stated firmly that Algeria fully intended to retain French as a language in primary school for a very long period. 12 But this would depend in part on relations between France and Algeria. Since independence Franco-Algerian relations had blown hot and cold. 1971 was a dramatic year with Algeria's decision to seize a 51 percent interest in French oil companies, and full control of natural gas interests and pipelines, on February 24, and later its unilateral decision to raise the price of its oil in April, followed by France's unilateral decision to stop importing Algerian wine and her decision to end her "special relationship" with Algeria. France could not longer depend, as Paul Fabra of Le Monde observed, on a long common history or upon "francophonia" to assure 11

H i g h e r education n o w included, besides the three full universities, a Centre Universitaire Tlemcen. 12 At the end of 1971, J. P. Péroncel-Hugoz o f Le Monde Diplomatique (January 1972, p. 33) f o u n d French to be securely implanted in Algeria in spite of steps t o arabize. In Algeria there w e r e m o r e French than Arabic bookstores; 4 3 percent of television time was in French; the widest read local papers w e r e the French version of El-Moudjahid and La République (in O r a n ) ; 476 French professors taught at the three universities (Oran, Constantine, Algiers), and four fifths o f t h e university students were preparing f o r diplomas in French. In public and administrative circles the language was still French, and even in arabized schools, a considerable n u m b e r of h o u r s w e r e devoted to t h e French language. P é r o n c e l - H u g o z concluded that while trying, Algeria had far t o go t o o v e r c o m e t h e old prejudice which had French the language of m o d e r n i t y , Arabic the language of religion and poetry. de

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the continuation of an economic liaison "with a special political implication". 1 3 As he observed, two "logics" had clashed: "While the Algerians clearly seek to change their relations with France radically, the latter persists in acting - or in not acting - as if the Evian agreements and those of July 1965 which dealt more specifically with oil were still valid. French policy continues to rely on the assumption that because of francophonia we can maintain special links with Algeria, while Algeria appears to be much more attracted politically and ideologically towards the progressive nations of the third world." France's boycott of Algeria's oil ended in September 1971 when ELF-ERAP came to an agreement with the Algerian national oil company, S O N A T R A C H . By 1972 tensions between France and Algeria seemed to have relaxed. But serious problems continued to cloud Franco-Algerian relations - the decrease of French imports from Algeria (only 25 percent of her oil supply, and virtually no wine); 14 the sometimes racist treatment of Algerian workers in France; and Algeria's increasing financial involvements in France's African sphere, Mauritania in particular - in 1974 when Mauritania entered the Arab League, she was receiving considerable aid from Arab countries, Algeria especially. When Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika, Algeria's foreign minister, however, visited Paris in July 1973 he seemed fairly optimistic that relations would improve. It seemed likely for example, that the number of migrant workers allowed to enter France would increase (as the supply from Portugal dried up). Pointing to the fact that Algeria was requesting more French secondary school teachers, and that Algeria was "the second most important French-speaking state in the world", he observed that Algeria provided France with an excellent sphere for her "rayonnement culturel". 1 5 But détente was to be temporary, in spite of the pleas of men of good will, like Jean Offredo, and the members of the Association FranceAlgérie,

a n d o f t h e Commission

Française de Justice et Paix,

w h o strongly

urged that France be generous and wise in regard to Algeria, that it would be foolish to jeopardize France's standing in the Third World by alienating 13 Le Monde, April 15, 1971. O n e could n o t ignore the implication of a remark m a d e to J o n a t h a n C. Randal b y an Algerian before the conflict over oil erupted into the crisis of February 1971; " W h e t h e r w e like it or not, 130 years of a c o m m o n history have m a d e us lovers w h o quarrel, but finally m a k e u p " ( T h e International Herald Tribune, July 13, 1970). 14 In 1968, 55 percent of Algeria's e x p o r t s w e n t to France; in 1972 only 30 percent. 15 J.-P. Séréni, in Jeune Afrique, July 7, 1973, pp. 22-5. In 1974 France spent 178 million francs o n " c o o p é r a t i o n " with Algeria, one quarter of the foreign cultural budget. M o r o c c o , the second largest recipient was assigned 109 million.

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potentially so good a friend as Algeria. 16 They observed that with the universalization of education, French was becoming a language of the masses in Algeria; that Algeria was acting quite appropriately in both its efforts to become economically independent and in its effort to discover its Arabic and Islamic identities; and that it was regrettable that trade with Algeria, and the number of coopérants serving in that country, were declining, and that racism in regard to Algerian migrants was increasing. In France-Algérie (1974) it was maintained that France was an "habitude de Société" for Algeria and that it would be the height of folly to forfeit this advantage. Serious racist troubles marred the scene in the summer of 1973. Following the murder of a bus driver in Marseilles by a demented Algerian on August 25, reprisals led to the assassination of eleven Algerians. O n December 14 of this year the Algerian consulate in Marseilles was blown up, four were killed, thirty injured. Other incidents included an attack on Air Algérie in Marseilles, the national Algerian tourist office in Paris, and the Amicale des Algériens en Europe in Toulon. Members of the old O A S were suspected - there was talk of a mysterious Club Charles Martel - but the culprits of these racist actions went undiscovered. Indignant at these manifestations of hostility, the Algerian government suspended the migration of its citizens to France o n September 19, 1973 (in 1975 there were about 860,000 Algerians in France - 450,000 of these were laborers, 20,000 in commerce and the liberal arts). In 1974, however, matters improved. France began to acquire a more favorable image a m o n g the Algerians, as well as among Arabs generally, w h e n it became clear that President Pompidou, and then President Giscard d'Estaing, intended to continue General de Gaulle's stance in regard to Israel and the Palestinian question. In votes in the United Nations, in France's refusal to follow the lead of the United States over the oil crisis, and in urging negotiations with the P.L.O., France was acting, to Israel's chagrin and to the delight of the Arabs, as the Western power most friendly to the Arab cause. Through gestures such as the meeting of Jean Sauvagnargues, the Foreign Minister, with Yasir Arafat in October 1974, and France's abstention over the invitation of the P.L.O. to observer status in the United Nations, France captured very favorable headlines in Algeria's press, as in the Arab press generally. During 1974 visits of dignitaries to and f r o m Algeria served to relax tensions o n a concrete level. Visits by Foreign Minister Bouteflika to Paris, 16

Offredo (1973); France-Algérie (1974). Both pamphlets included useful statistics.

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in January 1974, and of Michel Paniatowski, France's Minister of the Interior, to Algiers, in December of the same year, led to various agreements over improving the status of migrant Algerians in France, increas? ing the number oi coopérants to be sent from France, providing for the release of some French prisoners in Algeria, and preparing the way for a visit of President Giscard d'Estaing to Algeria in the spring of 1975. This was the first visit of a French president to Algeria since independence. President Giscard's three-day visit, which began on April 10, was an apparent success, in spite of a bomb explosion at the Consulate-General of Algeria in Paris on the day of his departure - claimed by the Club Charles Martel — and even though banners were displayed bearing slogans of Algeria's immediate grievances against France in particular, the West in general: "Respect for Algerian Workers in France", "A Fair Price for Oil", "All Foreign Influences Out of the Mediterranean" (a theme of President Boumçdienne's); and support for Vietnam and, of course, the Palestinians (International Herald Tribune, April 11, 1975). In Constantine all the banderoles were significantly inscribed in Arabic (Le Monde, April 13-14, 1975). A cartoon in Le Monde (April 11, 1975) showed Boumedienne and Giscard looking across a desert waste at a row of oil derricks. Said Giscard: "Quel beau pays!" France seemed, now, to have reconciled herself fully to Algerian self-determination, but, of course, with the hope that this friendly acceptance would encourage Algeria to reciprocate materially, and to retain French as a dimension of her identity. In 1975 Boumedienne's oft-stated remark that France and Algeria were condemned to live together still held - as did de Gaulle's observation that Algeria was "la porte du tiers-monde". In this year France remained Algeria's chief importer (6,250 million francs) and client (4,000 million francs). France devoted 178 million francs to cultural "cooperation" with Algeria in 1974 (one quarter of the total budget for cultural cooperation of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs - to 109 millions for Morocco, 21 millions for Quebec). Eight percent of this budget went into salaries for coopérants, whose number was 5,200 in 1975. At the time there were 60,000 French citizens in Algeria. In spite of her oil wealth Algeria needed considerable foreign aid. In 1974 she spent one billion dollars for agricultural imports, and her population was expanding very rapidly. It had risen to fifteen million in 1975. In 1975 her ambitious program of rapid industrialization would require her to borrow one billion dollars to catch up to schedule. In 1975, the French language remained, problematically, an important

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component of Algeria's identity. Football on television was now broadcast in colloquial Arabic, and, as seen, geography, history and philosophy were taught in Arabic in the secondary schools, the judicial system had been arabized, the Faculty of Letters at the University had been arabized as had state normal schools, and promotions of civil servants depended, in principle, on their knowledge of Arabic. 17 Opponents of arabization were n o w on the defensive: to their argument that arabization would bring mediocrity, the answer was made that French was the language of privilege. Each group accused the other of being "bourgeois", the proFrench for being élitist, the pro-Arabs for frustrating socialist advance. 18 Many important figures, including Mostefa Lacheraf, counsellor to Colonel Boumedienne, believed that the process of arabization must be gradual, that the modernization of Arabic depended upon the stimulus of the French challenge and that "archaism" must not be allowed to favor regressive traditional elements. Another factor making for caution were the Berber speakers (about 20-30 percent of the population) who tended to prefer French to Arabic as their second language because it was a more useful medium for modernity. It might be noted, that the "algerianization" of cadres - in 1973-1974 there were for example, few French teachers on the primary level of education in Algeria - was not the same thing as arabization. It meant rather, that in many cases Algerians speaking French had now been trained to replace foreigners, just as many Algerian teachers replaced Arab-speaking teachers from Egypt, Syria and Jordan. In the case of Morocco and Tunisia, French relations were relatively simpler than they were with Algeria. The trauma of prolonged revolu17

See Younès Berri, "Algérie: la revolution en arabe" in Jeune Afrique, April 7, 1973, pp. 14-18. While in 1971, the Société Nationale d'Édition et de Diffusion ( S N E D ) published 25 w o r k s in French and 24 in Arabic; in 1973 it published 25 in French, 60 in Arabic (Le Monde, D e c e m b e r 13, 1973). 18 T h e s e debates appeared in the pages of El Moudjahid's cultural supplement. See especially issues of M a r c h 22, April 26, and M a y 24, 1974. A parallel debate was o v e r the question as t o w h e t h e r to favor classical o r colloquial Arabic. S h a m e was occasionally expressed over t h e fact that ten years after independence French still was the p r e d o m i n a n t functional language an u n f a v o r a b l e contrast was made to the N o r t h Vietnamese example. N o t e that m a n y Arabizers - in fact those in key g o v e r n m e n t positions - w e r e in the revolutionary m o d e r n i z ing tradition of the Revolution, not in the tradition of the m o r e religious reformist followers of B e n Badis. Ali M e r a d (1967, pp. 427-8) complained that in the Charte d'Alger of 1964 t h e contributions of the R e f o r m i s t ' U l e m a to the a w a k e n i n g of the national consciousness w a s barely mentioned. At the time, under Ben Bella, m a n y of the influential figures w e r e Marxists, one excuse for B o u m e d i e n n e ' s coup of 1965. Since, h o w e v e r , while conservative M u s l i m s had a freer voice, their traditionalism did not predominate.

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tionary war, and ideological intransigence had not been disruptive factors as in the latter case. In spite of stormy periods in Moroccan-French relations - the sequestration of French-owned land in 1965, the suspension of French aid (about 200 million francs a year), and the drama of the disappearance of Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris which led to the withdrawal of ambassadors in 1966 — relations were on an even keel in 1975 when President Giscard visited on 3 May. French remained the administrative language of Morocco, and French was still the passport to the ruling élite. Moroccan educators were still smarting from the unfortunate results of the precipitous arabization of the educational system immediately after independence — standards had been lowered and Morocco now found herself with a lack of qualified schoolteachers on the secondary level. In addition, members of this "third generation" (since independence) constituted a dangerous reservoir of discontented degree-holders who were in many cases unfit for administrative positions. 19 In Morocco, the number in school increased dramatically between independence (1956) and 1969 - from 330,000 to 1,450,000 students - but this was only 60 percent of the children of school age. The bulk of teachers in secondary school were foreign as were a majority of the professors in higher education (most, in both cases, were French). The first two years of primary school in Morocco were wholly in Arabic, but after this 50 percent was in French until the first cycle of secondary school when 75 percent was in French. The only language of instruction after this was French except for courses in Arabic culture. This was also true of higher education except for legal studies where 40 percent of those receiving their degrees studied in Arabic. Morocco's official language might be Arabic, but there were in 1975 in t h e schools of t h e Mission 19

Universitaire

Culturelle

et de

Coopération

Waterbury (1970, pp. 299-315). Other reasons for the problem of assimilating the "third generation" were that the administrative positions vacated by the French were now occupied by members of the "second generation", and that Morocco was relatively static in its economic development-jobs for the recent graduates of the "third generation" were hard to come by. The magnitude of the problem could be seen in the following figures: in 1953 some one hundred and fifty thousand Moroccans were studying in primary school, while in 1965 this figure had risen to over one million. Resentment of the emphasis upon French as the entrée to jobs found expression in riots in Fez, and other cities in Morocco in 1964 over the requirement that knowledge of French be a prerequisite for the baccalauréat. On the other hand, members of the élite who were exclusively educated in French, which was true of many leaders of the leftist National Union of Popular Forces, had a problem of communicating with the masses (ibid., pp. 213-14). See also "Problème de l'enseignement au Maghreb" (Maghreb, Jan-Feb 1970, pp. 30-48).

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(MUCC), 9,529 Moroccan students whose parents evidently felt French had an important future in the country (Europe-Outremer, May 1975). In this year, 6,300 French teachers served in the public system o f education and 650 Moroccan students were studying in France. Morocco received in aid 230 million francs from France (to $540 million from the United States, 428 million dirhams from Russia). Morocco was behind Algeria and Tunisia in its rate o f school enrollment - 100 percent in the cities but only 60 percent in the countryside. Illiteracy was perhaps about 76 percent — 20,100 students were on a university level. In 1973-1974 France, Morocco's leading trade partner exported to Morocco 2,516 million francs of goods, and imported 2,158 million francs from Morocco, 31 percent o f this in the form o f phosphates, a commodity whose price quadrupled in 1974 (from $17 to $88 a ton) - 55,000 Moroccans lived in France, most o f them migrant workers. For a number of reasons, including the wealth brought in by phosphates (with the Spanish Sahara which she claimed, Morocco would be the world's largest producer); the patriotic lightning-rod o f the irredentist campaigns to annex Ceuta and the Spanish Sahara; a clever policy o f encouraging the proliferation o f parties and so diffusing opposition; as well as Morocco's highly segmented society, Hassan II remained in power. And this he did in spite o f two efforts to assassinate him, once in his palace in Skhirat (July 10,1971) and once while in an aeroplane (August 16, 1972). But he needed French goodwill and assistance. With a high rate o f illiteracy and with an exploding population expected to rise from 17 million to 35 million by the year 2,000, Morocco, while probably the most beautiful country in the Arab world, was also potentially the most turbulent. According to Mokhtar Bouziri, a leftist trade union leader, 10 percent of Moroccans received 50 percent o f the national revenue; of 30,000 Moroccan companies, over 50 percent were foreign owned, and in 1973—1974, 22 capital executions had taken place and thirty critics o f the government were tortured to death (Le Monde, May 3, 1975). Morocco might not be the "neo-colonized" nation Bouziri claimed it to be, but it was certainly less progressive politically or economically than either Tunisia or Algeria. Willy-nilly, the French presence had many opportunities o f surviving in Morocco. In the case of Tunisia, in spite o f tension over the sequestration o f French-owned land and the suspension o f aid (about 200 million francs a year) in the sixties, by 1972 relations had returned to normal. In 1975 France was Tunisia's second export market (after Italy) and Tunisia's

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leading supplier. Linguistically, the situation was less tortured than was the case in either Morocco or Algeria. Tunisia had benefited from having the Protectorate over it (1881-1956) directed for the beginning by relatively enlightened administrators like Paul Cambon, Minister-Resident and then Resident-General from 1882-1886, and Louis Machuel, Director o f Public Education, 1883-1908. They both wished to avoid the mistakes made in Algeria and while, o f course, wishing to inculcate sympathy for France, they also hoped to preserve Tunisia's identity. Graduates o f the traditional kuttabs were encouraged to continue their studies in modern schools, but the schools themselves were left alone. A system of Franco-Arab schools was established where some attention was paid to the study o f Arabic - by 1893, 3,190 students were studying in these schools (Macken 1975). And in the Collège Sadiqi (founded in 1875 shortly before the French imposed their Protectorate), where both Arabic and French subjects were taught, the French administration introduced reforms that served to modernize the curriculum. This school was to graduate some of Tunisia's future national leaders. Tunisia, thus, never experienced the traumatic cultural disruption that did Algeria and Arabic as a language o f culture was never totally supplanted by French. Tunisia, under Habib Bourguiba and his colleagues o f the Neo-Destour Party, entered independence in 1956 with an adequate basis for nationhood and modernization as most scholars of the field agree, and a relative absence o f xenophobia. This partly explained the selfconfidence with which Tunisian leaders attempted to reconcile pragmatically the best o f her French and of her Arabic heritages. Both French and Arabic were made official languages. 20 Whether Tunisia would be able to sustain her equipoise after Bourguiba passed away was uncertain in 1975. Radicalism, evident among students, and the ideological pressures o f neighboring Libya and Algeria, might prove disruptive to Tunisia's balance and encourage tendencies, already present, toward a greater emphasis on Arabist, and Muslim values, and, among other things, cause Tunisia to intensify policies o f arabization. T o radicals like Bassam Tibi, with the dismissal in 1969 o f Ahmad Ben Salah, a promoter o f socialist cooperativism in the agricultural sector as Minister o f Planning, the hope for progressive change in Tunisia had been blocked, and Bourguiba had shown himself to be basically a conservative (see Tibi, pp. 80-120 in Grohs and Tibi, eds. 1973). Culturally, Tibi saw Tunisia in On Tunisia's relatively effective entry into independence and modernity see Micaud et al. (1964); Moore (1965 and 1970); and Brown (1974).

20

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the early seventies as more deeply under French influence than at the time of independence, and her educational system virtually a carbon copy o f France's with too great an emphasis upon cultural and literary studies and producing élites alienated from their "authentic culture". In spite of an increasing rigidity on the part o f Bourguiba - evident in a brutal policy o f handling student dissidence and in eliminating independent-minded colleagues from positions of power - in 1975 Tunisia remained "Bourguibist", comparatively the most liberal of the three states, and the closest culturally to France. In 1969 an attempt was made in Tunisia to begin French with the first year of primary school, but on June 5, 1970, this decision was modified as follows: the use of French now began in the second year (ten hours as compared to fifteen in Arabic); and from the fourth to the sixth years this was reversed and fifteen hours were henceforth given in French (to ten in Arabic). In 1973-1974 there were 2,000 French teachers in Tunisia and French aid in 1973 to Tunisia amounted to 110 million francs (to $620 million from the United States). A Grande Commission Mixte Franco- Tunisienne de Coopération Culturelle, Scientifique et Technique served to iron out difficulties between France and Tunisia and assure France's extensive cooperation in Tunisia's development. Literacy was high, around 80 percent; 10,500 students were studying in the three universities of Sousse, Sfax and Tunis, and 5,000 students were studying abroad. O f the 539 university professors in 1971, 423 were Tunisian. In 1975, 50 percent o f the classes in primary education were in French, 80 percent in secondary, and 90 percent in higher education (although in Arts arabization was making rapid progress). In short, Tunisia, the least rich o f the three North African countries in natural resources, was the richest in human resources, and unlike Algeria, the French language was strongly enough represented to make Tunisia a genuinely bilingual nation. In 1975, then, the French linguistic presence was strong in Tunisia, by choice, in Morocco, partly through inertia, and in Algeria, if only provisionally. In all three French was becoming a language of the masses through the universalization of education. Except for Lebanon, this was a unique phenomenon in the Arab world and this deep French cultural presence continued, to a considerable extent, to give North Africa a different personality from the other Arab states (including Libya which had opted for complete arabization). Why had the leaders of francophone North Africa so chosen? And was the choice a happy one in terms o f identity?

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Among the reasons for this linguistic option were the following: these states already had French (encouraged by French aid) at their disposal as a vehicle for modernization; conversely, while dialectical Arabic was the maternal language of the great majority (with Tunisia increasingly an exception), these dialects of North Africa, unlike classical Arabic in which the Middle East was firmly rooted and which it had adapted, to a marked degree, to modernity, were too fluid and unstandardized to serve modernity. Many North Africans did not wish to rely exclusively upon Arabic, a language which in its classical form was difficult and which, it was felt, embodied a world remote from the modern, and in its vernacular form was lacking in uniformity, standardization and discipline. The eastern Arab world, to be sure, had evolved an alternative, an increasingly standardized modern Arabic, but even this form of Arabic did not yet appear to be a fully satisfactory substitute for French, especially in the sciences and other modern disciplines, at least for the time being. Another factor was doubtlessly one of pride or snobbishness - many among the élites were proud of their French heritage and wished to provide their children with it - as Malek Haddad said, "It is easier to resist Massu than Molière" (quoted by Péroncel-Hugoz in Le Monde Diplomatique, January 1972, p. 33). A fourth factor was that even if rapid arabization was attempted (as Morocco had in the early sixties briefly and unsuccessfully), these states lacked a sufficient number of trained teachers in classical Arabic - early efforts to use Egyptian teachers on a massive scale proved abortive. Abdallah Mazouni's (1969) work was perhaps the most extensive discussion of the entire question. 21 He warned his fellow Algerians that rapid arabization might prove regressive and might even alienate students from Arabic culture because of the difficulty of the language and the very inadequate tools for teaching it (pp. 21-8). O n the other hand, a danger of the present situation in Algeria was that the myth that Arabic was a language only for prayers and poetry, French for action, development and 21

T h e questions o f arabization and bilingualism w e r e debated in countless articles in Jeune Afrique. See in particular the issue of M a r c h 17, 1970, pp. 62-3, w h i c h summarized the proceedings of a conference on " N a t i o n a l C u l t u r e and Bilingualism" sponsored in February 1970 b y the Association des Étudiants Nord-Africains in Paris. A c o m p a r a t i v e s u m m a r y discussion of language and education in three French-speaking N o r t h African states is that of M o o r e (1970, pp. 261-73). Also useful is Viratelle (1970, ch. 15) w h i c h is entitled " U n E n s e i g n e m e n t inadapte". Viratelle's thesis is that at the t i m e o f w r i t i n g the educational system of Algeria w a s overly modelled u p o n the French system and so unsuitable f o r a nation with a high rate of illiteracy and w h i c h had o p t e d for socialism and rapid industrialization. In the sphere of language, he feared that students were being badly trained in b o t h Arabic and French and s o m i g h t be ending u p w i t h o u t an adequate c o m m a n d of either.

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modernity would be encouraged to persist (p. 38). Today, Mazouni observed, the monolingual Arab was at a disadvantage; he did not have access to most ministries and he lived oh the periphery of administration and even o f cultural activity - he was a second-class citizen, in a sense, in his own country (p. 185). A similar observation was made by Fathallah Oualalou in regard to Morocco. 2 2 He observed that French was the language o f the status quo, o f the establishment, and that it cut off those who spoke it in the normal course o f affairs from the mass o f people and from the "national authenticity" - French, in short, was the language of the privileged and a bastion o f sorts against change. Contrary to what most Frenchmen thought, he suggested, Arabic was not the language o f regression, but increasingly the language of "contestation et revendication sociale", a point one might have treated with some scepticism, at the time. In Morocco, in any case, the view that prevailed was that outlined by King Hassan II at a National Conference in Rabat in April 1964. The King defended Morocco's bilingual approach on the grounds that Morocco lay in a continent whose major working languages were French and English, and he warned against any tendency to cut Morocco off from world culture and the outside world by any hasty option for monolingualism. 23 He appealed, in short, for a pragmatic commonsense approach rather than one that was passion-ridden and ideological. Similar in approach to King Hassan's was that of the Algerian novelist 22 "Pont de vue du tiers m o n d e " (Esprit 1970, pp. 151-8). See also pages 69-80; Le Monde, June 3, 1970; and David Daure's attack on the French educational presence in Morocco, " L e Français, pour quoi faire?" (Maghreb, Jan-Feb 1970, pp. 40-2). According to Daure, because the best teaching and best schooling was in French, bilihgualism favored French; many scions o f the élite were taught in the Mission schools and French tended to be the language o f the aristocracy, in effect, but o f an aristocracy that was déraciné, cut off from the masses culturally. He observed that nothing had prevented the Japanese from progressing and modernizing rapidly in their own language. Criticisms o f members o f the élite who sent their children to French Mission schools was made at a colloquium on Arabic and French culture in December at Mohammedia. See Le Monde, December 19, 1970.

The speech is summarized in footnotes 2 and 3 o f the mimeographed conference version o f Gallagher (1966). Against this moderate policy, Allai al-Fassi, the leading political and cultural voice in favor o f returning Morocco to its Arabic and Muslim roots, continued to denounce the French character o f Moroccan education as well as o f the mass media (.L'Orient-Le Jour, November 13, 1971). A gruesome vignette o f the French linguistic presence in Morocco was provided by John Waterbury in " T h e Coup Manqué", American Universities Field Staff, North African Series, vol. X V , no. 1, (Morocco), July 1971, p. 10. In an analysis o f the massacre o f July 10, 1971 at the king's summer palace at Skhirat he wrote: "Witnesses noted that the cadets and their officers had conducted the entire proceedings in French. O n e guest whispered to the French cultural attache that he should be very proud o f the progress the French language had made in Morocco." 23

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Mouloud Mammeri who gave short shrift to the somewhat rhetorical laments of figures like Malek Haddad and Kateb Yacine over their "exile" in the French language. In an interview, accorded Abdallah Mazouni, he said: I do not think that there is any incompatability or contradiction [in an Algerian writing in French]. T o be sure, I w o u l d like to be able to render Algerian sentiments and situations into Arabic or Berber . . . [but], as far as I am concerned, to think that our passions and our ideals are irremediably tied to the use of any o n e language, is to fall precisely, into the trap o f those w h o previously wished to deny us [as subjects]; it is to make what w e think or experience realities o f an e t h n o g raphic order, dead objects for museums; it is to reify {choisifier) and to cut ourselves o f f from the great family of man . . . in a planetary a g e . . . T h e French language is for m e not at all the shameful language o f an enemy, but an imcomparable instrument o f liberation and, secondly, o f c o m m u n i o n w i t h the rest o f the world. I consider that it translates us (traduit) more than it betrays (trahit) us. 2 4

Even more sanguine that Mammeri over the legitimacy of French in the Algerian context was Frantz Fanon, a black ideologue from Martinique who played a leading role in the Algerian Revolution as publicist. Fanon argued that with the psychic release violent opposition to the colonizer provided, the French language ceased to be an instrument of humiliation to become one of liberation. "It is the Algerian Revolution", he wrote, "that is facilitating the spreading of the French language in Algeria" (Fanon 1959, pp. 89-92). But as a French-educated radical Fanon failed to assess adequately the Arabic and Islamic dimension of the Algerians, to exaggerate, as did so many pieds rouges, the "socialist" and universalist dimension of their Revolution. Had Fanon survived the Revolution, he would doubtlessly have been among those to argue the Revolution had been "betrayed".25 24

LeJour, May 27 and June 3,1966. The quotation is reproduced in Mazouni (1969, p. 221). For Malek on his "Exile" see Gordon (1962, p. 36), and for Yacine's "Jardin parmi les flammes", Esprit (1962, pp. 770-4). Yacine blamed his exclusively French education for the fact that he could only sing his song of exile in French. But, of course, Yacine was performing in a sense - he became with independence something of a witness for the French presence. 25 The argument for "betrayal" was perhaps most fully made by Maschino and M'Rabet (1972). Their thesis, in regard to culture and language, was that arabization, as well as islamization, were basically smokescreens to maintain the present counter-revolutionary petit bourgeoisie in power. The authors insisted that French was an authentic Algerian language, and while favoring the development of colloquial Algerian Arabic, they rejected the artificial resurrection of classical Koranic Arabic in Algeria. Maschino's was also the theme of Bassam Tibi in Grohs and Tibi eds. (1973). Arabization and islamization were being used to develop a "false consciousness" and shield the ruling clique of bureaucrats and officers and their petit bourgeois followers. The point made by both Maschino and Tibi that

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Whether this accusation was j u s t one or not, today's Algerian leaders, while they had neither dispensed w i t h French n o r appeared to have any particular complex about it, were adamant in their endeavor to recover for Algeria her "authenticity", and to j o i n in language and culture the c o m m o n Arab c o m m u n i t y of nations. This was made clear in the speeches and writings of A h m e d Taleb (Ibrahimi), w h e n Minister of Education. 2 6 While A h m e d Taleb accepted the fact that French w o u l d remain a necessity for a long time, he insisted that Algeria's situation was one of a "bilinguisme circonstanciel" rather than "doctrinal". Ultimately French w o u l d have only "the status of a privileged foreign language". T h e density of the French linguistic presence, contemporaneously, he observed, was the result of a deplorable historical legacy which had divorced the educated élite f r o m the masses, and only allowed Algerian culture to survive in folklore and through the courageous effort of the Association of the ' U l e m a (led during the Revolution b y his father) to preserve Arabic as a language of culture in their free schools. Taleb rejected the false alternative of the neo-colonialists w h o would have it that Algeria must choose either "authenticity" or modernity. This fallacious argument confused Western culture and universality. The past, he insisted, must be rejoined to the present, and this was only possible through the m e d i u m of the Arabic language. Japan and Israel had proven that authenticity in a traditional language and modernity could be linked. In the Arab world, Syria and Egypt, where he stated science was taught successfully in Arabic, had p r o v e n the same. B u t Taleb was honest about the difficulties involved in arabization, difficulties Mazouni had treated. H e recognized that French was still in present Algeria more important than Arabic for purposes of personal advancement. And he admitted the fact that to date, prejudice favored French, and that the will to create a "general atmosphere" favorable to the universal use of Arabic, still needed to be encouraged. It was understandable that for N o r t h Africa's creative writers, most of w h o m were educated in French and produced their w o r k s in France, nothing had been done to revolutionize the agrarian sector would no longer appear to apply subsequent to their works. The Algerian government decided to take serious steps toward dividing land among the poorer peasants and helping them to produce more. 26 Taleb 1973. He was Minister of Education to 1973. In 1974 Mohamed Seddik Benyahia became Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Abd al-Hamid Mahri, Minister of Primary and Secondary Education. Later Mahri was replaced by Abdelkrim Benmahmoud.

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independence, and social and cultural revolution should cause acute problems of identity, both on an existential and on an artistic level. Before independence these writers had produced a substantial body of literature, much of it revolutionary in content and dealing with problems of national identity within the context of French rule (Gordon 1962). With independence, some, in effect, migrated to France to become, for all practical purposes, French writers; others remained loyal to their nation but chose to live in France, or else lived there as political exiles; and others remained in their countries but not always easily.27 For the Algerian writers of French expression arabization constituted something of a challenge. As writers in French they appeared to be alienated from Algeria's cultural revolution; total arabization might lose them what audiences they now had in their own nation. Here we consider some of the leading Algerian writers in the post-independence period. Mammeri, as seen, appeared to find no difficulty in continuing to express himself in French, but he was concerned lest Algeria "asphyxiate" herself by not allowing free play to the various dimensions of her identity, the French included. He refused to submit to any policy "synonymous with regimentation (encasernement) or any sort of mechanical dogmatism". Mammeri, it might be noted, was a Berber, proud of this heritage also. Similar in position was that of Kateb Yacine, a brilliant dramatic poet and novelist, who continued to live in Algeria and had sufficient prestige, apparently, to be immune to censorship of his oftentimes blunt criticism of the current policies of arabization and islamization. He was prepared to go so far as to state that he found the Koran "boring" and its language of no interest to him (Maschino and M'Rabet 1972, p. 243). Algeria, he felt, should remain trilingual (with Berber the third language) and open to the "Other". Mohammed Dib, primarily a novelist, had abandoned writing about the "Revolution", a subject he believed remained a subject of literature only out of laziness, and he devoted himself to problems of individual psychology (a subject he was convinced Muslim society was hostile to). He lived in France and had in effect entered the orbit of French literature itself. These writers were of the older generation, those w h o had experienced the period of French colonialism and the Revolution as adults. Among the younger generation, those born around 1940 and so only adolescents during the Revolution, was Mourad Bourboune (b. 1938), a 27

Much of the material in the following several paragraphs was derived from Déjeux (1973). This work is rich in analysis and information based upon personal interviews. Also useful on the subject are periodicals like Souffles (Rabat) and Présence Francophone.

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Kabyle Berber, once director of the Commission Culturelle of the F.L.N, and, since 1965, a political exile in France. B o u r b o u n e favored full play to French culture in Algeria, and a spiritual renaissance, as he put it, of the pre-Islamic Berber soul. As enjant-terrible, he openly attacked the " J d a n o v s " of contemporary Algeria, guarding over the "foetus of the Revolution". T h e "Jdanov" B o u r b o u n e had particularly in mind was Mostefa Lacheraf, adviser to President Boumedienne on matters cultural, w h o s e attitude, in turn, was that m a n y writers like B o u r b o u n e were m e m b e r s of a small coterie of "spoilt children" living off flattery in Paris, a "supercherie". Abdellatif Laabi, a Moroccan critic, shared Lacheraf's views of writers who, he said, w r o t e for a foreign audience, not for their o w n people, and were guilty of "pathological negativism" — he had in m i n d another enfant-terrible, the Moroccan novelist Khair-Eddine. And also of this opinion was the Moroccan writer and critic, Malek Alloula, w h o begged N o r t h African writers to stop trying to draw world attention b y indulging in self-pity, and stop agonizing over the language question and, in effect, get on with the j o b . As to the language question, B o u r b o u n e was of the opinion that one should have n o inhibitions over using French and he insisted that French was as m u c h a part of Algeria's identity as was Arabic. Rachid Boudjera, (b. 1941), married to a French w o m a n and living in Paris, was as scathing in his attacks u p o n the ruling class as was Bourboune. Loyal to Algeria, h e h o p e d that it w o u l d adopt a less bourgeois and a m o r e revolutionary approach. O f these writers Boudjera was unusual in that he believed Arabic should and w o u l d become the predominant language of Algeria, a prospect which presented him with n o problem since he k n e w good Arabic and its classical literature well - he had translated poems of Lorca into the colloquial dialect, in fact. Also able to write in Arabic was Assia Djebar, author of many works in French treating the subject of Algerian w o m e n and their problems before and during the Revolution. She favored, for Algeria, a bilingual identity but only if b o t h Arabic and French w o u l d be k n o w n with equal t h o r o u g h ness. Otherwise, as was the current case, a "dechirement" of mind and soul resulted. She herself claimed to feel in Arabic, but to think in French, echoing perhaps, reluctantly, the prejudice a m o n g many francophone Algerians that Arabic was for poetry, French for science and modernity. O n e other influential Algerian writer was Jean Senac (b. 1938), a French poet and m a n of letters who had opted for Algerian citizenship. Senac accepted philosophically the fact that he and his fellows were writers of

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transition, that the authentic expression of the people would to be in Arabic - at best, he argued, French could only transcribe or translate the Algerian reality. He hoped that some day the contributions of writejs such as himself might be translated into Arabic and so contribute to the awakening of Algeria's true national identity. While Algerian creative writers tended to feel, on the whole, ambivalent about Algeria's "revolution", approving of it in principle if not in execution, Morocco's two outstanding writers of French expression, Driss Chra'ibi and Mohammed Khair-Eddine, had no hesitation in attacking their own authoritarian and conservative society. Thus in an angry letter to Confluent replying to a criticism of Moroccans who wrote in French (by Mohammed Hadj Naceur), Chra'ibi vitriolically denounced such xenophobia as a case of false pride. He stated that Arabic was "sclerosee" and unsuitable for modernity, and he observed that, in any case, very few Moroccans could read classical Arabic. A writer needed liberty, he insisted, and hence he, personally, could only live in France, and distribute his books through French publishers. For Moroccans French should continue to serve as a bridge to a universal culture, was his conclusion. Khair-Eddine (b. 1941) was the same age as Boudjera and like him married to a French woman and lived in France. His Agadir, like several of Chraibi's works, was violently negative in its treatment of all aspects of traditional Moroccan society - he was a kind of latter-day nihilist. But, at the same time, he was proud that his work had been translated into Arabic. Among Tunisians, Salah Garmadi, a poet, asked why as an Arab "populist", opposed to francophonia, he still wrote in French rather than in either classical or dialectical Arabic, answered that his choice of language was a reluctant one, but that the " w o r d " needed to be expressed whatever the price. Colloquial Tunisian Arabic, he said, was viscerally closest to him, but its radius was limited to his immediate Tunisian circle. Classical Arabic, on the other hand, a language taught to him originally by a Frenchman in French, was not as natural a language in his own nation as was French, and French, of course, provided an international audience (Garmadi's type of dilemma was one reason, according to J. E. Bencheikh, an expert on modern Maghreb culture, for the relative poverty of North Africa's literary productivity, since independence, in either French or Arabic). 28 Salah Garmadi, in any case, was openly grateful for his French 28

Le Monde, March 13, 1973. In an interesting article Lyle Pearson concluded that the poverty of the movie industry in Algeria was in part a result of this country's confusion about her cultural identity. Little encouragement was given to native artists either by government

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heritage which he saw as the chief factor in liberating him from the bonds of tradition. Albert Memmi, a Jewish Tunisian intellectual and novelist, lived in France. His favorite theme, both in his novels and in his many essays, was that of the "damned of the earth". He first made a stir with his Portrait du colonisé, précédé du portrait du colonisateur (Paris, 1957) i n w h i c h ,

albeit in a more analytical and dispassionate way, he defended ideas very similar to those of Frantz Fanon. In this work he predicted that "the literature of the colonized in a European language seems destined to die young", by which he meant, he later said that he expected North Africa to become wholly Arabic linguistically. Memmi caused a minor literary storm in 1964 when he published his Anthologie des écrivains maghrébines d'expression française (Paris), for not including excerpts from FrenchAlgerian writers like Jean Pelégri and Gabriel Audisio, both once sympathetic to Muslim aspirations, or even Albert Camus. Mourad Bourboune, among Memmi's critics, was furious that the selection seemed to imply that Algerians were "double-cultured" rather than "doublerooted" in both French and Arabic cultures. T o use Assiâ Djebar's term, there was, then, a "déchirement" over language and culture, over identity, as well as over politics, in North Africa. So long as French remained an intrinsic part of North African society, this would persist. Perhaps the day would come, first perhaps in Algeria, when, with arabization, a culture would emerge in which French would be only of extrinsic importance. But this, to echo a famous remark in the comic-strip Astérix le Gaulois, was not for today. A dimension of the language question in North Africa that remains to be considered - one particularly important in Morocco, partly in Algeria, but negligibly in Tunisia — is that of the Berber and his language, or rather "dialects". Berber was the language of perhaps 50 percent of the Moroccans and 20-30 percent of the Algerians, a language distantly related to Arabic but quite distinct. France had attempted to exploit "Berberism" to divide and rule, but in vain as events were to prove. T o a large extent, in fact, France's effort to implement her Berber policy by the Dahir of1930 in Morocco, for example, which provided a special legal status guaranteeing traditional pre-Islamic Berber communal procedures and exempting them

or by local audiences. Some fine films that were produced included Mohammed Bouamari's Le Charbonnier (1972) and Lakhdar Hamina's Chronique des années de braise which won the grand prix at Cannes in 1975. Le Monde, June 26-7, 1975, observed that Algerian audiences preferred to see Western thrillers and karate films than movies about themselves.

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from the Shari'a (Islamic law), sparked off militant resistance to France. According to Charles-Robert Ageron (1972), Berbers during this period often expressed their resentment when addressed in their own dialects by Frenchmen by responding defiantly in Arabic ("La politique berbère du Protectorat Marocain de 1913 à 1934"). According to most students of the Berbers the French exaggerated the nature and the extent of Berber identity. 29 The Berbers had no written language nor any one common dialect — many tribes could not inter-communicate with any ease. While, like other Muslims, they had inherited certain pre-Islamic traditional ways of regulating their affairs, they were almost all Malikite Sunni Muslims like the Arabs (or arabophones), and in Morocco, even if many tribes were in a state of "dissidence" before the French protectorate and refused to allow taxes to be collected among them, they accepted the spiritual supremacy of the Alawite rulers. Many Berbers, in the spheres of business, trade and administration had for a long time interacted with Arabs. And as far as the French were concerned, most Berbers saw them as alien intruders and many of the outstanding leaders in the independence movements were Berbers. What dissidence existed against the central government was no longer a matter of wishing to be free from administrative intrusions, but represented a desire to participate in government and in the process of modernization. But while "Arabism" and "Berberism" were not antithetical concepts, it needed to be observed that the dichotomy did have some bearing on the linguistic situation in North Africa. In the ex-Spanish zone in northern Morocco, for example, arabization tended to be favored over the use of French whose imposition was seen as a part of the domination of the rural and largely tribal north by the urban interests in the south (Gellner and Micaud eds. 1972, pp. 25-58, David M. Hart, "The Tribe in Morocco; T w o Case Studies", p. 47). In Kabylia, in Algeria, on the other hand, Berbers preferred French over Arabic because they saw it as a more appropriate entry to modernity, and as indicated, it was not to antagonize berberophones that the Algerian government was moving cautiously on arabization (ibid., pp. 285—303, William B. Quandt, "The Berbers in the Algerian Political Élite", p. 288). As for the Shleu in Morocco, who were 29

See Gellner and Micaud eds. (1972); Ageron (1968, I: pp. 267-92, 332-7, and 1972, pp. 109-48); and Merad (1967, pp. 355-62). Gellner (1969, pp. 14-17, 70-1) denied that there is any Berber identity in any "pan-Berber sense", and saw Arabic as prevailing over Berber with general urbanization and modernization. Monteil denounced France's Berber policy in Kabylia for providing no education in Arabic and so adding to the identity confusion of the Kabyles. See his preface to Fadhma Aïth Mansour Amrouche, Histoire de ma vie (Paris 1968).

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traditionally small busihessmen, and whose interest had been interwoven with those o f Arabs over generations, and usually knew Arabic, they had shown little opposition to the abolition of the Berber judicial system devised by the French (ibid., pp. 325-43, André Adam, "Berber Migration in Casablanca"). In Mauritania, geographically and culturally astride North Africa and Black Africa, the French language served as a defense among Blacks against the domination by the Arabic-speaking Moors (ibid., pp. 375-93, C. C. Stewart, "Political Authority and Social Stratification in Mauritania", p. 392). Both French and Arabic were official languages. Another important aspect o f the problem o f linguistic and cultural self-realization in North Africa was that òf the presence in France of some 800,000 Algerian, 200,000 Moroccan, and 100,000 Tunisian migrants. 30 These workers and their families were to one degree or another separated from the life o f their nations, and their children were growing up in ah alien ambience. About 225,000 Algerians, in France, for example, were under twenty and many of them knew no Arabic. Some of them were learning French in schools - many would remain illiterate and speak only colloquial French. It would be difficult to integrate them into any wholly or partly arabized Maghreb, when these states were economically prepared to employ them at home. O f the three states, Tunisia was the most enthusiastic about its French dimension publicly, and the least neurotic about it. It was close to being a genuine bilingual state in the healthy sense that among her people the two languages lived relatively harmoniously together. It has already been seen how important a role Tunisian leaders played in founding the Agence de Coopération.31 In contrast, Morocco only sent an observer and refused to join until it had considered the matter more carefully - perhaps to allay the hostility to it o f Al Alam, organ of the influential Istiqlal party, which denied vociferously that Morocco was francophone, that Arabic would ever cede its place to any other language. And Algeria rejected the whole idea o f an institutionalized Francophonia as potentially "neo-colonialist". Commenting on Tunisia's positive attitude to the Agence, in contrast, the See Minces (1973). I have discussed this question in "Algeria 1962-67: an Essay on Dependence in Independence" (Gifford and Louis eds. 1971, ch. 21). In 1975, there were 840,000 Algerians in France. 31 For a discussion of the attitudes of the three North African states toward the Agence see Maghreb, May-June 1970, pp. 12-13. See also, on Morocco's view, Le Monde, March 25,1970, and, on Algeria's, Le Monde, March 24, 1970. 30

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Tunisian ambassador to Paris in i968, Muhammad Masmoudi, declared that French was a force for "promotion" and not "alienation" fot •Tunisians, and that through it the Tunisians had come to "know themselves". 32 He added: French culture has been for us a school in lucidity; a way of becoming selfconscious; a tool for promotion and, finally, a weapon with which to combat the old colonialism and its [induced] prejudices - all of its prejudices including obscurantism, obsolete habits, and others.

As indicated earlier reactions in North Africa against the threat of French education to Islamic values and their bearer, the Arabic language, inspired a free-school movement in each of the three North African states. But each reaction had its own character, influenced by the particular historical experience of each state with colonialism as well as its pre-colonial openness or closedness to general Mediterranean currents. These reactions, to an extent, anticipated post-independence cultural policies that were followed in each of the states since independence. The Moroccan free-school movement had emphasized modern education in Arabic but supported a few bilingual schools, the Algerian had been heavily traditional and Arabic, while the Tunisian had been bilingual and the most "modernist" in its approach. 33 N o w , as seen, Morocco's policies were confused and uncertain, Tunisia had clearly opted for a bilingual approach, and Algeria, while in effect bilingual, Was the most adamant in proclaiming its Arab identity and in insisting on total arabization as its ultimate goal. In 1975 Paul Balta even wondered if French in Algeria might not be becoming so "banalized that in the future only technical aid might need be provided" (Le Monde, April 9, 1975). This, he said, was the most serious problem facing the French linguistic presence in Algeria. 34 And at a conference in Tunis on language problems in March 1975, a Moroccan delegate declared 32

Francophone '68 (1969, p. 37). Contrast this with Algeria's denunciation in the Arabic version of El Moudjahid of the francophone policies favored by Senghor and Bourguiba for perpetuating a "shameless exploitation and a cultural imperialism" (Le Monde, August 19, 1972). 33 Damis (1970, pp. 236-8). As the term implies, the "free school movement" was an enterprise by private Muslims to provide educational possibilities outside the private or public French-sponsored system. 34 There was some talk in 1975 of Algerian administrators who favored long-range plans to replace French with English as the nation's second language-160 Algerians were studying in the United States at this time - because French was so symbolic and memory-laden for Algerians.

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that "We talk about Arabization; the Algerians are doing something about it." 3 5 In any case, in North Africa, the French language remained, problematically, a dimension of identity, for individuals and for governments.

A leading authority on Morocco, Ernest Gellner, states: " I believe the impact o f French culture in North Africa to be profound and permanent. In his heart, the North African knows not merely that God speaks Arabic, but also that modernity speaks French. T h e Arabic and French cultures share what might be called an imperial or absolutist or world-pervading character — each o f them possesses a kind o f brilliance which leads them to absorb the souls o f those who internalize them, and to fill out their world. In some curious way, for North Africa these two total visions are complementary rather than rivals. (I remember a little chieftain in Atlas telling me that there were three languages in the world - Arabic, French and Berber.)" (Gellner and Micaud eds. 1972.) Another anthropologist, however, Clifford Geertz, is more doubtful o f the depth and the future o f French culture and, by implication, language, in Morocco at least (1968, pp. 4, 64). 35

CHAPTER 6

French as Legacy

"I reply, explicitly and deliberately, that France has done much for Guinée. O f this there is striking evidence, for example in that the orator [Sekou Touré], whom I have just heard, spoke in very good French . . . " (De Gaulle 1970, p. 60 speaking in 1958).

While North Africans had a rich language through which to fulfill and express their authentic national identity, in other parts of the world, notably Black Africa, the temptation for want of an easy alternative, was to try to recover and express one's national identity through the medium of the language of the colonizer from w h o m one had gained independence. In principle this was not necessary, but from the point of view of convenience and practicality, reasonable, if ironic. In the case of Black African peoples, only recently liberated within the confines of borders set by their previous masters and according to the politics of another continent unconcerned with the tribal or linguistic distinctions among their charges, new problems of national identification arose. In Europe linguistic distinctions had coincided roughly with national boundaries, or it was assumed that they would in the ripeness of time, through national unification or irredentist fulfillment. Thus, in the West, primary nations, or nationalities, culturally self-conscious and with common emotive symbols, preceded the formation of national states; in Black Africa the situation was, in large part, the converse. Elites with nationalistic values and aspirations fell heir to peoples w h o were usually heterogeneous linguistically, socially tribalist in identity, and with many diverse historical memories and cultural legacies. An authority on Africa, Basil Davidson, has spoken of Black Africa as "a multitude of separate identities" based upon more than a thousand "distinctive languages",

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developed over time from four or five root Ursprachen (1968, pp. 51-2). Nationality for these new élites had to be created following the creation of nations in the legal sense, in the sense, for example, of recognition as members of the United Nations. There were many, of course, w h o argued that the new nations were artificial, parts of a larger nation with a common "black" culture, the antithesis of Western colonial culture, embracing all of Africa. But for economic, historical, social reasons, this proved a chimerical proposition even if it did play an important role mythically, affectively, symbolically. The élites of the new nations had been educated in English, French or Portuguese, and the masses of their people spoke a bewildering variety of languages, often only oral, and unsuited in their current state, for purposes of modernity. Because nation-building was facilitated by the adoption of a single language for purposes of inspiration, social mobilization, and "modernization", as most African leaders believed, it seemed inevitable to many of them that they would need to use the developed language they already possessed, the colonialist language, rather than reject this language as a factor for alienation, and to universalize it among the masses of their peoples through education. Thus, ironically, the French language, once rejected by Germans and others, as alienating, had become in several parts of Africa, the language of national identification, as it had become, before independence, the language of revolt and of the quest for African authenticity. 1 Alternatives to this approach, of adopting widely spoken vernaculars, for example, or constructing identities according to religious traditions, threatened to be fissiparous rather than integrative, and panAfricanism, as suggested, was too vast and vague a concept to stimulate unity after the other's presence faded. 2 As will be seen in the discussion which follows, to many Africans the solution of adopting a European language continued to be problematical, but to 1975 at least, the general pattern among the states to emerge from the French African empire, was 1

See Emerson (Deutsch and Foltz eds. 1963, pp. 95-116); Fishman, "The Sociology of Language: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Language in Society" (Fishman ed. 1971-2, I: 217-404, pp. 314-15); Fishman (1972b, pp. 31-2, 80-2). Prosser Gifford and Timothy Weiskel in "African Education in a Colonial C o n t e x t . . . " (Gifford and Louis eds. 1971) say of language as legacy of colonialism: "To speak through another mask and to preserve the self within is a constraining art. In this sense the colonial struggle continues still. Africans must wrest from French and English the power to enhance rather than efface themselves" (p. 711). 2 Foltz, "Building the Newest Nations: Short-Run Strategies and Long-Run Problems" (Deutsch and Foltz eds. 1963, pp. 117-31). With independence, the author observes, the slogan "independence" itself loses its "magic force" (p. 121).

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to seek identification in French and to consider, or to pretend to consider, the French language their own heritage. France's African empire, after its abortive reconstruction within the Union (1946-1958) and the Community (1958-1960), gave way to the independence of Guinea in 1958, of six states of West Africa and five states of Equatorial Africa in 1960, and Mauritania in 1961. T o a large extent the independence of these states was formal rather than real, even if they were admitted to the United Nations upon independence. Politically and militarily (with the notable exception of Guinea) far-reaching agreements of "coopération" in 1960-1962 bound these states to their erstwhile métropole. And while, with time, these agreements were revised and France's hold was challenged, the pervasive and profound impact of the French language, if not of her culture, was likely to be felt for a long time. Almost all of the leaders of ex-French Black Africa had been educated exclusively in French. Possibilities for such an education were initially those provided in missionary schools until 1854 when, under the influence of General Faidherbe, a system of public education was started. By 1900 there were 70 state schools in French West Africa teaching 2,500 students. 3 After 1944, when it was determined to push education energetically, the numbers increased considerably; by 1953, 229,695 natives were in school in French West Africa of which 63,734 were in private, mainly missionary, schools (80,000 were in Muslim schools). O f great importance was the establishment of the University of Dakar in 1957 under the name of Université de l'Afrique Noire Française. In the same year about 471 French West African students were on scholarship in France. In the less developed area of French Equatorial Africa there were 68,909 students in public schools and 60,821 in private schools in 1953. The public schools by law and the private schools perforce came under the metropolitan French system. Native dialects were discouraged (a policy reconfirmed at the Brazzaville Conference in 1944) and, especially after 1945, French standards were applied. The class group to benefit most f r o m this limited but important French effort were usually the sons of tribal chiefs who were, in effect, trained to become French administrators. Out of France's educational effort came not only the leaders of today's francophone Black African states but also a host of writers who, in several cases, made important contributions to French literature itself. Among such writers one might mention Bernard Dadié (Ivory Coast), Mongo 3

Hailey (1957, pp. 1193ff). On the educational scene in Black Africa with independence see Moumouni (1968).

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Beri (Cameroons), Ousmane Socé (Senegal), Camara Laye (Guinea), and, of course, Léopold Senghor. Also worthy of mention was the team of writers for Présence Africaine, particularly its founder Alioune Diop from Senegal. The first issue appeared in November—December 1947, in Paris, and was introduced by André Gide. Important writers produced in Madagascar included Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo and Jacques Rabemananjara. Of great cultural importance now was the aforementioned University of Dakar which was largely financed by France. It had faculties of law, sciences, letters and medicine. O n the eve of the collapse of the French Community in 1960, it had 1,316 students of w h o m 935 were Africans (Le Monde, hebdomadaire, December 1959, no. 582). Among the Blacks the largest groups came f r o m Senegal (276), Dahomey (138), the Ivory Coast (181) and French Sudan (122). After 1969 control of the University by the Senegalese government increased, and a greater emphasis was placed upon African Studies. But the rector remained a Frenchman, and the French government provided the main source of financial aid. This was also true of the other three French universities in Africa, Yaounde, Abidjan, and Tananarive. French was not the language, of course, of the great majority of the Black Africans in the francophone sphere, where illiteracy was very high (90 percent, for example, in Niger, Mauritania and Upper Volta), and in Senegal, the area of France's longest presence and most important cultural investment, probably only ten percent of the adults understood French and only one percent spoke it fluently (Viatte 1969, pp. 101-19). But it was this small upper crust that ruled and was determining the future. Since 1960, and until 1975, the "French presence" in Africa had been mainly directed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - of the 1,300 million francs devoted in 1969 to aid to Black Africa and Madagascar, 85 percent was handled by this Ministry. 4 But in 1975, under the direction of Pierre Abelin, Minister of Cooperation, a fresh approach was adopted. Sixteen "missions de dialogue" were sent to different parts of the francophone world to consider h o w best to extend and coordinate aid to developing countries. Stéphane Hessel was in charge. The new policy, it was declared, was to show a "respect for cultural policies" of independent states and not 4

Balous (1970, pp. 132-9). France successfully brought her African charges into the Common Market on an associate basis. According to the Yaounde agreements of 1964, considerable investment in the form of grants and loans were made in these countries by the EEC, most of which benefited French firms who obtained 70 percent of the contracts for development. See Lusignan (1969, pp. 338-9).

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try to compete with "local languages, bearers of national cultures", but rather to encourage a "dialogue of cultures" along with political dialogue (Le Monde, March 5, 1975). In 1974, Africa was provided with 10,764 technical assistants and only 1,213 in the military (to 3,000 in 1960). French was the official language in all of the states she once held sway over, on a par with English in the Cameroons, with Malgache in Madagascar, and with Arabic in Mauritania. All had cultural agreements with France, including even Guinea, since 1963. Also now in France's cultural orbit were the relics of the Belgium empire, Ruanda-Urundi and Congo-Kinshasa, where the few intrusions made linguistically by Flemish nationalists had been erased. French was now even making an entry into anglophone Africa where it was obligatory in secondary schools in the Sudan, Ghana, Malawi, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Zambia; it was optional in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.5 France provided these states with about 130 teachers. In addition, there was a lycée of the Mission Laique in Addis-Ababa established in 1900 where the Alliance Française also ran a technical school. France was also a presence in a number of islands off the African coast, of which the more important were Réunion, the Comores, Mauritius and the Seychelles. Réunion, a French possession since 1643 (except for 1810-1814 when occupied by the British), had been a department since 1947. The population of about 400,000 was largely dominated by a French-speaking aristocracy from among the 30 percent whites - the mass language was a French créole.6 The Comores were the least French of the islands and although it had representation in the French Parliament this "territory" was autonomous and had its own governing Conseil du Gouvernement. The popular language was Swahili; the language of the ruling élite is Arabic - there were only about a thousand Europeans present among a population of about 230,000. In December 1972 the Comores Assembly of Deputies opted for a policy of seeking rapid independence, and in December 1974, the islanders voted for independence. In 1975, there were tensions between 5

Balous (1970, pp. 170-1). A correspondent concerned with the introduction of English into francophone African states found the going very difficult in 1971 because of the virtual domination of the educational systems of francophone Africa by agencies of the French government. See English Around the World, November 1971, pp. 1, 4. H e saw as symbolic of the French hold the fact that to telephone f r o m Cotonou in Dahomey to Niamey, one had to communicate through the Paris Central. 6 Viatte (1969, pp. 83-96). Some important writers, Lesconte de Lisle, for example, have come f r o m Réunion.

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those who wanted to keep ties with France and those who did not residents of the island of Mayotte rejected independence. The Seychelles, autonomous, under British control, had as their mass language a French créole and their two most important educational institutions were secondary schools run by French missionaries since 1861. Mauritius, with a population of about 820,000 (1970), had also been under British rule (since 1815) until its independence in 1968.7 The official language was English. The major mass language, however, remained a French creóle (spoken by 60 percent of the population) and the ruling élite remained French speaking. In addition, French was obligatory as a second language in primary school and French was the major language in the Legislative Assembly and in the courts (where the Napoleonic Code remained in effect). Table 1 illustrates the dependence of almost all of francophone Africa upon France after over a decade of independence8— the figures on numbers of technical assistants illustrate the relative stability of this dependence. This dependence was sustained by the reigning gallicized élite (about 5 percent of the total population) whose attraction to France was abetted by vested interest. Other data of relevance to the new states appear in Table 2. The agreements of 1960-1963 between France and the various African states provided for the regulation of all spheres of life, the financial, the political, the cultural. Of francophone Africa's some 2,500 sizeable business enterprises, only some one hundred were directed by Africans. Most of the others were French run. Constitutions and legal systems were in most cases adaptations of the French model, as were administrative practices. Frenchmen in these states were free from visa and tariff restrictions and France had to be consulted over major foreign policy and economic decisions. Throughout the area, top echelon administrative positions were occupied by Frenchmen (in 1972, 90 in Niger, for example, 200 in the Ivory Coast).9 Of some importance also was the presence of some 60,000 7 See Michel Legris' four articles on the island in Le Monde (November 6, 7, 8-9, 1970). Mauritius' dependency Rodriguez was also independent. For an account of the intricate politics of Mauritius, reflecting the heterogeneity of its racial and religious character, see the special supplement to Jeune Afrique, April 21, 1973, pp. 56-66. Catholics were 250,000; Protestants, 8,000; Hindus form 51 percent of the population, Muslims 15 percent; the "Creoles" are 28 percent of the population. O f the original French stock there were only 30,000. 8 Total French aid to the developing world was $1,742,000,000 in 1969, $3,347,571,000 in 1975. 9 See Corbett (1972) for much of this data. See also The Economist (1965).

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Table 1. Francophone African States (1966-1967 and 1974-1975) Aid and Technical Assistance French Aid, in millions offrancs

French Territory of Afars and Issas (Somalia) Republic of Burundi Federal Republic of the Cameroons Central African Republic Chad Comores (4 islands autonomous territory) Congo-Brazzaville Republic of C o n g o Kinshasa (Zaire) Ivory Coast Dahomey Gabon Guinea Madagascar Mali Mauritius (independent since 1968 — member ofOCAM) Rodriguez (dependency of Mauritius) The Islamic Republic of Mauritania Réunion (Department) Niger Rwanda Senegal Seychelles Togo Upper Volta

Number of French technical assistants present

1974

1966-1967

29 24.6

— 5

— 96

142.774 80.063 171.425

947 594 650

835 435 578

30.3 76.1

— 514

— 525

73 1,735 255 506 — 1,783 411

354 3,190 184 599 — 699 373

24.7

—

66

—

—

—

262 — — — 1,540 — 138 469

304 — 504 86 1,267 — 198 469

86.860 183.707 49.2 93.4 — 106.5 94.8

34.890 420,000 139.8 25.8 194 — 54.914 134.840

1974-1975

Source: Francophonie '68 (1969) and Europe-Outremer, February 1975.

Black African migrant laborers in France (a group which, however, usually experienced France at its seamiest and m o s t exploitative), and the presence of several thousand African students in French universities w h o

182

French as Legacy Table 2.

Francophone African States

Population French Territory o f Afars and Issas (Somalia) Republic of Burundi

Federal Republic of the C a m e r o o n s Central African Republic Chad C o m o r e s (4 islands autonomous territory independent 1975) Congo-Brazzaville Republic of C o n g o Kinshasa (Zaire) Ivory Coast Dahomey Gabon Guinea Madagascar Mali Mauritius (independent since 1968 — m e m b e r of O C A M ) Rodriguez (dependency of Mauritius) T h e Islamic Republic of Mauritania

(1974-1975)

Students enrolled in universities

Percentage of scholarization

Language

200,000 3,544,000

400

6,000,000

5,533

3,200,000

500

60-65

4,030,000

450

43

French "national l a n g u a g e " Sango French

230,000 1,320,000

—

23 80

French

—

—

24,842,051 20,346 6,000,000 5,500 2,948,000 1,180 950,000 563 — 5,143,284 8,080,900 4,000 5,500,000 2,200 — 850,000

20,000

—

30 21.5

Official

70

61 52 33 80 —

50 30 90

—

1,200,000

710

Réunion (Department) Niger

420,000 4,350,000

396

11.3

Rwanda

4,050,000

489

47

Senegal Seychelles

4,100,000 45,000

5,200

40

Togo U p p e r Volta

2,060,000 5,410,000

—

—

350

15.9

—

61 11

French French and Kirundi (Kirundi, the national language, used in primary school) French and English

French French French French French French and Malgache French English (French the language of the white artistocracy; 60 percent speak Creole) people speak Creole and French "national language" is Arabic (French and Arabic official) French French (half of people speak Maussa) Kinyarwanda the national language; it and French official French popular language Creole; English the language of education French French

Source: Francophonie '68 (1969) and Europc-Outrcmcr, February 1975.

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tended to become radical and hostile to their own countries usually dominated by military regimes or single party governments. 10 Militarily crucial after independence was the presence o f 12,500 French troops in some o f these states - in 1970, 2,250 were in Senegal; 600 in the Ivory Coast; 2,500 in Chad (where since August 1968, French troops have been in action in support o f President Tombalbaye's attempt to preserve the unity of his mixed state o f Muslims to the north and the Sara people to the south); 400 in Gabon; and 4,400 in former French Somaliland (Afars and Issas).11 While not intervening during coups d'état in Togo (January 1963), Congo-Brazzaville (August 1963), or Dahomey (October 1963), France did act forcefully in Gabon (February 1964) to protect the government (in part to assure a source of uranium). According to the various agreements made between 1960-1963 France had military access to all ports and airports and the right to maintain permanent bases in Senegal, Chad, and, until 1973, Madagascar. From these bases troops could be rapidly deployed to other parts of Africa. 12 In the field o f finance, France worked closely with the Organisation Commune Africaine et Malgache (OCAM) which was established in February 1965 in Nouakchott as heir to the earlier Union Africaine et Malgache de Coopération Economique (UAMCE), and then the Union Africaine et Malgache (UAM) and, finally the Organisation Africaine et Malgache de Coopération Economique (OAMCE), still referred to as O C A M . Until 1973 it was through O C A M that France consolidated her finanical dominance over her erstwhile empire. 13 Many members of the ruling élites openly defended and even lauded their links with France. Leopold Senghor in particular, the golden voice o f 10 Jean-Pierre N'Diaye (1962) disclosed that 63 percent o f African students in France considered themselves opponents o f their governments. 11 Booth (1970). In 1972 there were 4,000 French military in Madagascar. Paul Bernetel observes that several francophone African cabinets were in effect run by "Toubabs" - French "doctors". In 1972 there were 40,000 French in the Ivory Coast to 12,000 on the eve o f independence, in Gabon 13,000 to 4,500 {Jeune Afrique, April 29, 1972, pp. 18-20, 23). 12 During the riots in 1972 against President Tsiranana the legendary General Bigeard was given orders to use his troops to evacuate the president physically for his protection. T h e president bravely refused this offer [Jeune Afrique, June 16, 1973, pp. 12-15). This interview with the General was quite revealing o f the crucial role the French military played in Madagascar. 13 T h e bulk o f French foreign assistance went to these francophone states. G. de Beaurepaire observed that in making the decision in 1971 to continue to focus the bulk o f its technical assistance abroad in the francophone African states the partisans o f "linguistic" aid had won out over the "mondialistes" who favored a much more cosmic distribution o f French assistance {Jeune Afrique, July 7, 1971, pp. 16-17).

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the Agence de Coopération, declared that French could indeed be used to express the African soul, that not only was French a necessary tool for modernity but, as he wrote in the Postface to his collection of poems, Ethiopiques, it was also "a great o r g a n " on which anything could be played including the flute, the oboe and the trumpet - as well as the tam-tam. 1 4 Senegal was, in several respects, the area of Africa in which France had most deeply implanted roots, and was perhaps France's most important bastion on the continent. France's presence in the geographic area that n o w constituted Senegal dated back to the seventeenth century, and over time its inhabitants became the most "assimilated" of France's African subjects. St. Louis was founded in 1659, to be followed by the comptoirs of Dakar, Gorée (later incorporated into Dakar), and Rufisque. These small settlements consisted, by 1837, of about 78,400 inhabitants. In 1848 full citizenship was granted to all the residents of these four mercantile enclaves without prejudice to their subjects' religious "personal status" (in regard to m a r riage and inheritance). Except for the years 1852-1871 these rights of citizenship were maintained until independence - in 1946 they were extended to the interior regions of Senegal. In 1880-1887 these enclaves became communes de plein exercise, a unique status for people most of w h o m were of native or of mixed racial origin. By 1919 local government was dominated by Africans w h o took over control f r o m whites, largely E u r o pean merchant families, many f r o m Bordeaux. Already in 1914 one of its sons, Blaise Diagne, sat in the Chamber of Deputies in Paris, and in January 1918, had risen to a position of enough influence for him to be appointed Commissioner-General of the Republic for the Recruitment of Troops in Black Africa, a position which gave him equal status to the Governor-General of West Africa. Joost Van Vollenhoven, the Governor-General at the time, resigned. In 1928 the Council of Senegal included 32 blacks and eight whites. Senegal by this time was well endowed educationally with schools, including the Lycée Faidherbe, Lycée Van Vollenhoven, and the Ecole Normale William Ponty. Figures such as Lamine Guèye and later Léopold Senghor came to play important roles in the politics of French metropolitan life in the thirties and forties. At this time opposition to French colonial rule became vocal. Guèye began to demand social reforms, although still within the context of the empire — he 14 For a discussion of how Senghor came to reconcile négritude with the presence and the use of the French language, see Markowitz (1970, pp. 61-3). See also Robert Delavignette's discussion of Senghor's ideas on French in Culture Française (Summer 1969, no. 2, pp. 3-6).

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was an assimilationist; and in 1934 Senghor, with the Caribbean intellectual Césaire, founded L'Étudiant Noir to defend the values of Négritude. In the forties Senghor, having entered the political arena, rose to local power in Senegal as a defender of the interests of "the bush" against the privileged élite of the assimilated coastal cities. His party, the Bloc Démocratique Sénégalaise (BDS), stood, in the complicated maneuverings of the years leading to independence of the African states, between the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA) which was assimilationist but favored autonomy, led by Felix Houphouet-Boigny, and the more radical Parti Africain de l'Indépendence (PAI), led by Majhemout Diop. Senghor supported de Gaulle's short-lived Community after 1958, but with the collapse of the Community he led Senegal, while protesting the "balkanisation of Africa", to independence and became its first president (see Crowder 1967). The Senegal that became independent in 1960 - and separated from Mali in 1962 — remained deeply under the influence of France. About 50,000 Frenchmen remained in Senegal — not however as colons since most French in Senegal traditionally returned to France to retire. Business was almost exclusively in French hands, with Lebanese immigrants as middle-men (see O'Brien 1972). O n the whole there was little racial prejudice, except among petits-blancs, and little hostility to whites on the part of blacks. There was easy public mixing, even if there was little intermarriage, or private social intercourse. There appeared to be no difficulty for the Senegalese to show loyalty to a president married to a French woman and who spent his vacations in Normandy. Unlike less fortunate states, Senegal was relatively well integrated, in part because of the French influence. Most citizens were loyal to Senegal as a unity, in spite of tribal groupings — the Wolof (35 percent) the Lebou, and the Serer were "tribal cousins", and traditionally connected to the Toucouleurs (9 percent) and the Fula (17 percent) - only the Mandingo (7 percent) had quite a separate identity. The rate of tribal intermarriages was high, and Wolof served as a lingua franca on a mass level. The French had contributed to making Senegal homogeneous in various ways (Crowder 1967, pp. 96-113). They had tended to ignore tribal differences, had undermined the power of tribal chiefs, had provided for intermixing in the units of the famous Tirailleurs Sénégalaises, had provided a common French education (on an élite level), and had allowed for supra-ethnic unions and political parties. To those who criticized Senghor for his extraordinary dependence upon

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France, Senghor answered that because of a pitiful lack o f resources Senegal needed France to modernize. As to culture, he insisted that Senegal needed the best of French culture, provided that the Senegalese assimilated this culture, adapted it to their inner spiritual rhythms, and were not assimilated by it. Change occurred very slowly to 1975 in spite o f socialist slogans and talk o f "Senegalization" (Europe-Outremer, March 1973 and May 1975). Symbolic o f Senegal's Frenchness, according to Michael Crowder, was the opening o f the Dakar Festival o f Negro Arts in 1966 (1967, pp. 129-30). It was opened by André Malraux, the patron of honor was General de Gaulle, and catalogues were distributed entitled L'Art Négre: Dakar-Paris 1966 because after closing the exhibits were transported to the French capital. The University o f Dakar, as the whole secondary system o f Senegal, remained French-run - even i f juridically the University became Senegalese - with methods and standards those of France herself, and manned principally by French professors. Seven years after independence one third o f the students were French and all the full professors were French. In 1973 there were 25,213 Frenchmen in Senegal, mostly in Dakar. And, although associated with the Common Market, Senegal's business world was still dominated by the French. Many francophone blacks did not, of course, agree with Senghor. As well as often dismissing his sort as agents of French "neo-colonialism", they argued that the continued use o f French was a cause and a mark of dependence, not only material and political, but also cultural. In Senghor ed. (1948), for example, Léon Laleau, a Haitian, said in his poem "Trahison": ". . . ce désespoir à nul autre égal d'apprivoiser, avec des mots de France? Ce cœur qui m'est venue du Sénégal?" (p. 108). Richard Bedeen stated: "It would be criminal to condemn oneself to remain alienated in a foreign l a n g u a g e . . . " {Jeune Afrique, April 28, 1970, p. 49). Other intellectuals who rejected Senghor's rationalizations o f the French cultural presence were Paulin Hountondji of Dahomey who denounced those who neglected their mother tongues to perfect their French as "prisoners"; Marcien Towa of the Cameroons, author of Léopold Senghor: négritude ou servitude (Yaounde, 1971), who talked of Senghor's "Uncle Tomism"; and Ayi Kwei Armah o f Congo-Brazzaville who wrote: "There is something so terrible in watching a black man trying at all points to be the dark ghost of a European... the black man who has spent his life fleeing from himself into whiteness has no power if the white race gives him none." (Corbett 1972, pp. 43,185-6). And Sekou Touré rejected membership in the C o m -

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French as Legacy

munity, in 1958, partly because he saw it as a way o f perpetuating the " c o m p l e x o f the colonized" which produces depersonalization; for the same reason, as seen, Guinea refused to join th e Agence de Coopération.

"To

be ourselves once again, to be in harmony with ourselves", T o u r é has said, "it is essential that w e express ourselves in our own language." 1 5 T h e problem o f identity permeated almost all o f the literary work o f French-educated African writers. U p o n those educated in the French system and w h o had contact with the literary world o f Paris, the impact was profound — many had become deracinated, exiles from their o w n culture. What Mercer C o o k said o f René Maran was true o f many o f them: ". . . for all his sensitivity, intensified though it was by his long sojourn in Equatorial Africa, [he] became less and less a N e g r o and more and more a Frenchman under the liberating spell o f the French capital" (Cook 1943, p. 150). Herbert Passin, discussing an international conference held in Ibadan in 1959, observed h o w frenchified Black African negroes were in their way o f thinking, in contrast to their British-trained counterparts Ancient Jar o f Dahomey: letter from Black Africa", Encounter,

("The

September

1959, pp. 3 3 - 9 ) . For example, he noted that many o f the latter wore native costumes while the French-educated, however much they might proclaim 15 Jeune Afrique, April 1-7, 1968, p. 44. Ahmad-Baba Miske o f Mauritania wrote: " T h e neocolonialist school crushes national language and culture, creates an unrooted and unemployed class. It forms an élite, in tiny doses having French as its only language o f culture, one which can handle the imperfect o f the subjunctive with ease but is cut off from its own people, from the realities and the problems o f this people. D o you call this cooperation?" (Le Monde, August 4, 1973). Bertrand Fessade de Foucault agreed: "French 'technical' assistance in the field o f education has not yet been adapted to African n e e d s . . . T h e French language can only serve to help in African development if it is learned and spoken without any reference to any French project, whatever this might be, and even without any reference to the civilization o f the old métropole" (Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1973, p. 10). Radicals have often regarded Senegal as the most blatant case o f dependence upon France (see e.g. Fanon 1961). Jean-Pierre N'diaye sarcastically quoted the commander o f Senegal's armed forces as once having said: ". . . independence is a m y t h . . . there is no difference between the French flag and the Senegalese flag" (Le Monde, August2-3,1970). Time (February 2,1968, p. 26) quoted Senghor at an economic conference in Niamey (of thirteen African chiefs o f staff): " W e desire to keep and use fruitfully the positive aspects o f francophone colonialism." T h e conference, Time naughtily observed, was financed by France to the tune o f $500,000 and France provided most o f the economists who carried on the discussions. On the devotion o f Senegal's élite to French culture and language see Philippe Decraene, " L e Poids de la France", the third o f a series on Senegal in Le Monde (August 22, 1970), and Claude Wauthier in Jeune Afrique (April 8, 1972, p. 45). Also strong is the French presence in the Ivory Coast. At the end o f 1974, 50,000 whites, mostly businessmen, were present, to only 12,000 in 1960. Larry Heinzerling remarked in International Herald Tribune (February 17, 1975): "It's still 80 to 90 percent a French colony. " As for Gabon, the white population o f Libreville was 15 percent o f the total: 20,000 whites lived in this nation o f only one million (Le Monde, February 6-7, 1975).

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négritude (of which many o f the former were suspicious!), all wore, with one exception, European suits. A French scholar, J. Weulresse, once observed in regard to this problem of identity and alienation through French: Does not this teaching o f French, which can only be superficial, risk the formation of déclassés? As soon as he knows but a few words of our language, the native believes himself to be of a superior race and of a class which has a right to all rights. He feels it below his dignity to go back to the soil. What he wants is a situation as a clerk in some business or, preferably, in the all-powerful administration. But such positions are few and overcrowded, and often badly paid. Then the unfortunate one believes himself to be the victim of gross injustice, for having wished to make him halfFrench, w e shall have made him "anti-French", an agent of discontent and revolt. 16

A n d Anne-Marie Goguel complained that the system of education in Madagascar (in 1962) was completely French and run by t o o many metropolitan coopérants w h o considered any tendency to make the system Malgache as a direct threat to themselves and w h o produced, o n a cultural level, a split between the life of thought among their students and the real life o f the mass o f people. 1 7 Edward Corbett, generally pessimistic over Africa's search for her cultural authenticity because o f the commitment o f the élites to France, nevertheless pointed to straws in the wind that offered s o m e promise o f change: the influence o f ex-British ruled states and the use they were making o f Hausa, Yoruba and Swahili as national languages; the fact that increasingly schoolteachers out of class, w h e n they come from the same tribal grouping, addressed one another in their dialect rather than in French; and, o f course, the contestation o f s o m e o f the intellectuals already cited (Corbett 1972, pp. 41, 46, 94). 16 Q u o t e d in Stonequist (1937, p. 64). Conversely, there was the danger that the French cultural impact inspired indifference if n o t contempt t o w a r d the native culture. A n Semi-Bi (Jeune Afrique, April 29, 1972, p. 7) observed that conferences on African culture w e r e sparsely attended by the young. But Siradiou Dialle {Jeune Afrique, M a y 20, 1972, pp. 18-21) cited the son of a peasant c o m m e n t i n g on Zaire's "authenticity" p r o g r a m : ". . . m y father cannot understand w h y the haves wish to resemble people like myself; it should be the reverse." 17 " C o o p é r a t i o n culturelle" (Esprit 1962, pp. 810-21). O n the psychic split o n m a n y évolués see H o f f m a n (1958), w h o observes: " F r o m the cultural point of view, every French N e g r o poet has a split or, rather, double personality. O n the other hand, he cannot identify himself w i t h a culture which accepts h i m s m u g l y if at all, and is forcibly trying t o replace his ancestral traditions. French N e g r o poets are in a manner of speaking marginal m e n w h o feel t h e m selves to be different both f r o m the " p r i m i t i v e " tribe and f r o m "civilized" Europe. This d o u b l e personality affects n o t only the negroes of Africa and the French West Indies, b u t also Haitians, w h o are conscious and proud o f their African origin. " U s e f u l in this respect is Anozie (1970).

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189

But while psychic alienation or schizophrenia might result f r o m French education, it was only fair to point out the positive side of the "frenchificat i o n " of the Black African élite, as did Gerald M o o r e w h e n he suggested that it was t h r o u g h French assimilation that French African poets and novelists had discovered themselves. H e said the " . . . cultural imperialism of France has produced strange, t h o u g h lovely and exciting fruits. Instead of breeding black Frenchmen, it has produced a generation of French Africans . . ." 1 8 And Marguerite Higgins viewed "frenchification" as a positive good j u d g i n g the performance of the first Black African delegates at the United Nations (New York Times, Intl. Edition, December 26, 1960, " T h e Cosmopolitan Africans"). She described them as possessed of Gallic shrewdness and g r a c e - " . . . Africans whose faces still bear tribal scars" she wrote, "talking in flawless French about P r i m e Minister N e h r u ' s maneuvering, or, condescendingly, of Soviet Premier Khrushchev's 'uncultured behavior'." A m o n g the many "strange f r u i t s " M o o r e referred to, was the often brilliant poetry of the Négritude school. T h e Négritude m o v e m e n t of Caribbean and African Blacks was negatively a revolt against assimilation to an alien culture and positively a renaissance of African cultural and spiritual values. Paris was its capital. H e r e these writers and intellectuals, f r o m widely spread parts of the world, as fellow students, rebelled against the culture to which they had been so deeply assimilated but in which they n o w claimed to feel inauthentic. T h e y were encouraged in their efforts by French intellectuals such as André Breton and Jean-Paul Sartre. T h e y were influenced by Parisian artistic movements, surrealism in particular, and by Parisian versions of Marxism. Their inspiration derived f r o m the example of Haiti's independence f r o m France in 1804, a novel by the highly assimilated French administrator René Maran, Batouala: véritable roman nègre (1921) which w o n the Goncourt prize, as well as by black American protest writers like Langston H u g h e s and Claude McKay (especially t h r o u g h the f o r m e r ' s Banjo, Paris 1928), and other writers of the American " H a r l e m Renaissance". They f o u n d c o m f o r t and ammunition for their 18

" A f r i c a n W r i t i n g Seen f r o m Salisbury" (Présence Africaine, vol. 3, no. 31, pp. 67-94, p. 90). T h e reaction of " n é g r i t u d e " M o o r e s a w as a stage of t u r n i n g inward rather than b a c k w a r d , and so as a force for self-discovery rather t h a n escapism. N a n t e t (1972), while recognizing French as a possible source of alienation, observed that in the process of t r a n s f o r m i n g (and enriching) French m a n y peoples of t h e T h i r d W o r l d were finding n e w m o d e s t o express their authenticity, and that blacks of t h e Antilles and Africa w e r e able t h r o u g h French t o discover and explore a c o m m o n heritage t h r o u g h the c o m m o n m e d i u m of French.

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cause in the works of ethnologists like Leo Frobenius, and Maurice Delafosse, both of w h o m helped reveal an Africa with a rich history and a rich cultural past, and by Georges Hardy who inL'Art nègre (1927) praised the richness of African "primitive" art. The ideas of the black intellectuals were first published in obscure reviews of limited longevity: La Revue du Monde Noir (1930) which lasted for six issues, Légitime Défense (1932) which was suppressed after the appearance of only one issue, and L'Étudiant Noir (1934) which brought together Léon Damas of the Ivory Coast, Senghor and Césaire, among others. In 1947 Alioune Diop established Présence Africaine, a periodical which for a long time remained the major voice of the movement. The term "négritude" was first used in a work of literature in Pigments by Léon Damas, published in 1934 in Esprit, and, in 1937, as a separate volume. While each of the Négritude writers had his particular style and own political and social opinions, they all condemned assimilation and black writers w h o had become so French in their ambitions and personalities that they could not produce works that were more than pale imitations of French writers. In the opinion of the Négritude writers- Western civilization had become divorced from nature and had lost its sense of humanity. African culture, on the other hand, was integrated with nature and expressed its magical qualities. The Western approach to reality was mechanically logical and distant - the African was intuitive, affective, and participatory. In institutions such as the "palaver", Africans preserved human values, and in their art they provided an intimate link with nature. It was to a revitalization of this African culture that these intellectuals and writers devoted themselves, seeking to overcome what they felt to be their own alienation through assimilation. Among the most brilliant products of these writers was the poetry of Senghor, employing African themes and legends, as in Chants d'Ombre,

Hosties Noirs,

a n d Césaire's Cahier

d'un

Retour, perhaps the most seminal and best known single literary work. While not denying the brilliance of some of the writers of Négritude, there were francophone Africans who questioned the value of the term Négritude, because of its possible racist and negativist overtones, and preferred to speak of Africa's cultural "originality" (Kesteloot 1972, pp. 318-32). Others wondered if the term and the philosophy it embodied did not paradoxically serve to confirm racial prejudices among Europeans and reinforce the stereotype of the Black (L'Esprit Créateur 1970, pp. 163-81, "Négritude: Status or Dynamics?" Selin). Anglophone African writers tended to reject the concept of Négritude out of hand, perhaps because

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191

they were less self-conscious about their native cultures, never having been as fully assimilated as their francophone counterparts. At least one francophone writer, once fully associated with the Négritude movement, Jacques Rabemananjara, from Madagascar, felt that the movement would die out with colonialism — what, he asked did a Madagascan and a Dahomean have in common but colonial oppression? (Kesteloot 1972, p. 319). Influential in weakening the prestige o f Négritude — in the seventies perhaps only still important in Senegal — was, paradoxically, one o f its leading defenders, Jean-Paul Sartre. In his seminal essay "Orphée noir" (Senghor ed. 1948), he praised the movement as necessary, but only as a " m o m e n t " in the dialectical rejection o f colonialism, one which would eventually cede to the realization by Africans o f their common identity as proletarians in the class war. Sartre may have meant that, dialectically, Négritude, as antithesis, would be integrated into a higher synthesis, but he used the phrase, "will completely disappear" with unfortunate results. Lilyan Kesteloot, a leading student o f the movement o f Négritude, reproached Sartre for failing to realize that there was a genuine and permanent African culture, and that the writers o f Négritude, quite rightly, wished to give it expression, not in a racist spirit, but to contribute to a world society, without "ethnic privileges" (1972, pp. 111-12). As rich, in any case, as the poetry o f the francophone Africans just discussed was a large body o f novels by Africans. Most o f these novels were autobiographical, dealt with the problems o f identity, and incorporated many o f the values o f Négritude. Osman Socé, a Senegalese, wrote in his Karim (Paris 1948) about a young Muslim with a certificat d'études in Dakar who partook o f a "civilisation métisse", symbolized by his wont to enjoy dancing to the tam-tam as much as dancing the tango, and to yearn for the black girls o f Dakar as much as for "blond venuses" o f Paris. Bernard Dadie (Ivory Coast) in Un Nègre à Paris (Paris 1959) described a young black as hick in the big city, Paris, where he was befuddled by the complex civilization he saw, and in his Climbié (Paris 1956) he provided a description o f a primary school in which a " t o k e n " was circulated among the students, falling to the one who was last caught speaking any African dialect rather than French. T h e holder at the end o f the day was punished, an experience quite universal once to "natives" o f many different climates who attended French schools. 19 T h e whole novel contrasted the two 19 French linguistic regionalists observed that the technique o f the "token" to discourage students from speaking in their native dialects was also used in the hexagon against speakers o f Breton, Occitan, etc. See Temps Modernes (1973, pp. 95, 108). Syrian and Lebanese

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worlds in which the young protagonist lived. Once when in political trouble, he found himself".. . unassimilable, undigestable - It was not to become an obstacle that they gave him education. Having broken the contract, betrayed the confidence placed in him, he had become a traitor. " In Aké Loba's Kocoumbo: l'étudiant noir, the protagonist was confused to find that French friends considered the French educational system obsolete and technical civilization a disaster — the very things he had been taught to admire at home. And in Ousmane's novel and film, Xala (1974), the theme was cultural dependence in independence, the price of which was impotence, the meaning o f the title. Similar in theme, also, were Sembene Ousmane's Ô Pays, mon beau peuplel (Paris 1957), Camara Laye's brilliant Le Regard de roi (Paris 1954), and Cheikh Hamidou Kane's moving and profound Adventure ambiguë (Paris 1961). 20 Some o f these works treated the figure of the évolué with tender sympathy, others with irony and even mockery; all of them recognized the strangeness of the fate o f their autobiographical heroes who spoke a language which was the bearer of a civilization so radically different from their own. Whether it was wise for Africans to continue to be educated in French, to use French as the medium o f their literary culture as well as o f their politics and economics was for them, o f course, to decide. But a point often made by many Frenchmen as well as Africans was that there might be no alternative to the use of French if the African states wished to develop along the lines of modernity. There were, on the other hand, opponents o f this view who insisted that not only must Africans develop, modernize, and employ their own language, but who thought that this was quite feasible. Such a person was Vincent Monteil, who had spent the later part o f his professional military career dealing with problems o f language and identity. 21 colleagues o f mine who had received their early education in French schools spoke with bemusement o f their memories o f the device o f the " t o k e n " to help assure a perfect mastery o f French, one unpolluted by "native" intrusions. In 1924 teachers in French West Africa were forbidden by law to address their students in native dialects. Ousmane and Kane were Senegalese, Beti was from the Cameroons, Laye from Guinea, Aké Loba was from the Ivory Coast. 21 Vincent Monteil, "Le Problème linguistique en Afrique Noire" (Esprit 1962, pp. 796-809). SeealsoJ. Champion in Le Monde (December 3,1969). Monteil was a leading figure at the Centre de Linguistique Appliqués (CLAD) in Dakar which was concerned with modernizing African languages. Influential African support for Monteil's ideas came from many writers in Présence Africaine such as its editor Alioune Diop. A very interesting consideration 20

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193

Monteil observed that in most African states the masses were still largely illiterate, that it was by no means assured yet that French or English would be the national language in the long run. A m o n g the competitors were Wolof, Senegal's main language; Swahili, the lingua franca of twenty-five millions in East Africa (and the language of early primary school in Kenya); Peul (Fulani in English), spoken by six to seven millions (in the area of the Cameroons); and Mande, with its sub-groups Malinke and Bambara spoken by five millions in the area of Sudan. T o the argument that these languages were only oral, Monteil observed that the Arabic script was widely known (to about 40 million Africans - through Islam mainly), and that four to five out of every one hundred Muslims in Senegal transcribed Wolof or Peul in this alphabet. In addition, under the British, some African languages had been transcribed in Latin letters: there were dictionaries both in Hausa and Yoruba prepared by an Englishman, R. C. Abraham. T o the argument that there were so many dialects in each African country that their cultivation could only make for national disunity as well as greater African disunity, Monteil referred to Joseph Greenberg w h o showed, in 1955, that 100 million Africans spoke dialects with a c o m m o n base, Bantu. 22 Monteil also pointed out that many of the African states had one dominant language - Wolof in Senegal, Peul in Guinea, for example. In addition, many Africans made use of a common second language for business purposes (e.g. Hausa, Wolof). Pointing to the case of

of the f u t u r e of English in India is M. S. Rajan's " T h e Impact of the British Rule in India" {journal of Contemporary History, vol. 4, no. 1, 1969, pp. 89-102). In this special issue o n " C o l o n i a l i s m and Decolonisation", Rajan praised the British for having provided the ruling élites w i t h a single language for the first t i m e in their history, but he nevertheless observed that while it was difficult to enforce H i n d i as the c o m m o n language in place of English, the local, regional languages of India w e r e rapidly replacing English as the language of instruction and as b o t h the official and w o r k i n g languages of these states. In Kenya, efforts w e r e being m a d e to replace English with Swahili in Latin script as the language of the first years in p r i m a r y school. In Tanzania, Kishouaheli was being used as a m e d i u m of instruction. In the French sphere, R w a n d a was developing K i n y arwanda as its language of instruction. A specialist view of w h a t the m o d e r n i z a t i o n of a language involves, is Ferguson (1971, pp. 51-9, 219-32). What I call modernization, Ferguson calls " d e v e l o p m e n t " - this involves " g r a p h i z a t i o n " (reduction to writing); standardization (the d e v e l o p m e n t of a c o m m o n n o r m that transcends local dialects), and " m o d e r n i z a t i o n " (the d e v e l o p m e n t t h r o u g h a n e w lexicon etc. t o a stage of intertranslatability w i t h the languages of o t h e r " m o d e r n " societies). Each step facilitates the next - all three are attainable for any language t h r o u g h conscious planning. 22 For his classification of African languages into six g r o u p s ( N i g e r - C o n g o , Afroasiatic, Khoisan, Chari-Nile, Nilo-Saharan, N i g e r - K o r d o f a n i a n ) see G r e e n b e r g (1963). For a critiq u e of G r e e n b e r g ' s classification see Françoise Lacroix, "Les L a n g u e s " in D e s c h a m p s (1970, I: 73-90).

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Finnish, a language only in recent history developed into a modern national language, Monteil argued - and linguists would agree — that any language could be modernized and made use of for modernity. Monteil's views might have been irrefutable in principle, but the task of modernizing and standardizing African languages was enormous. A m o n g factors making for inertia, even among those w h o pay the idea lip-service, E. Roditi suggested, was that for many government officials French was a status symbol (Jeune Afrique, September 15, 1970, pp. 53—4). Efforts to develop African languages were generally partial and sporadic; and still lacking in most cases were suitable alphabets, dictionaries and all the other paraphernalia of language instruction and development. Pathé Diagne (a Senegalese linguist) saw the Africans as linguistically where France was in the seventeenth century, and he insisted that rapid progress must be made to counteract those w h o wished to cling to a heritage of "linguistic colonialism" which only served the interests of "alienated m e m bers of the petite bourgeoisie" {Jeune Afrique, October 1970, p. 47). T h e danger was that unless African languages were modernized rapidly enough, with mass education the use of French or English might become irreversible. But whatever the linguistic outcome might be, the pre-independence struggle for identification among black francophone Africans made use of French as medium of revolt, and, as stated before, Senghor and others found no difficulty in expressing an African sensibility by kneading and restructuring this language - as indeed the French structuralist poets had done before them. As Frederick Ivor Case said of Césaire, and the same could be said of Senghor and many others, he showed that a Western language "can be tailored to the needs of negro-African rhetoric. H e fashioned a French language on the anvil of the forger-priest, the forgersorcerer, the griot-forger of Africa" (L'Esprit Créateur 1970, pp. 242-56, " A i m é Césaire et 1'Occident Chrétian"). The poet René Ménil believed, that "Language is the f o r m of the universal" and so, he presumably meant, no problem existed, and Frantz Fanon maintained that since Césaire, French had been appropriated for African purposes and been made Africa's o w n (Kesteloot 1972, pp. 193, 241). At pan-African cultural conferences in 1958 and 1959 t w o recommendations were made in regard to language, each possibly but not necessarily incompatible with the other (Kesteloot 1972, p. 329; Emerson in Deutsch and Foltz eds. 1963, p. 113). One was that francophone Africans encourage the study of English among their people, and that anglophone African

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195

states encourage the study of French. The second recommendation was that one of the following vernaculars be adopted as soon as possible as vehicle for all Africa: Swahili (widespread in East and Central Africa), Yoruba (widespread in the Benin territory), Bambara and Mandingo (widespread in the Sudan), Peul (widespread in West and Central Africa) and Wolof (widely used in the Senegal area). Swahili, it was observed, already had an important literature, and Wolof had a literature as well as a scientific vocabulary. But the problems involved, as suggested above, were enormous, and should each African state promote its own vernacular, in place of English or French, the Pan-African dream would be more illusory than ever. Francophone Africa, then, stood at the crossroads culturally as well as economically and politically. Linguistically its different states had the option of either making French the effective language of the masses (which was their tendency) or develop native African languages. While a leader like Senghor seemed to feel that the "African soul" could find full expression in French, and therefore there was no real problem of identity involved in any ultimate sense, others disagreed (as seen) and felt that the perpetuation of French was a mark of dependence and the cause of a split personality among their people, of a "civilisation métisse". But, of course, within many of the bosoms of the Alioune Diops and of others elsewhere in the world who were confronted by the same dilemma, real feelings were often ambivalent. Many Africans were proud to speak French so as to be considered "civilized" in the rest of the world and, on a practical level, they knew that at least for a long time French had to be maintained, if only as a second language, if their states were to begin to keep up with the increasingly rapid pace of scientific and technological progress. Shortly after the independence of most of the African states, Cyrus L. Sulzberger was asked by President Kennedy to prepare a briefing before the American President's visit to General de Gaulle. In this "Kennedy Memorandum" of April 1961, Sulzberger suggested ". . . while I dislike any thought of 'buttering up' de Gaulle, it would be sensible to point out how pleased we are that the heritage of French culture (which, alas, may not last too long) in former French colonies in Africa has helped bring many of these to the support of Western causes in the U.N. Assembly" (International Herald Tribune, October 12, 1970). At the time this indeed seemed sensible, but Sulzberger's "alas", while prophetic in regard to France's physical and financial presence, might not prove to be so in regard to culture. During the reign of de Gaulle, in any case, France remained

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firmly implanted in her previous colonies, and the General himself, Africa's most popular world statesman. With the General's resignation and the accession o f George Pompidou to the Presidency the situation did not appear to have changed at first. In his tour o f Black Africa in February 1971, Pompidou was warmly received in the capitals o f Mauritania, Senegal, the Ivory Coast, the Cameroons, and Gabon. But fissures in the ex-imperial system were beginning to appear. As early as January 1971, Newsweek published an article entitled "France and Africa: the Winds o f Change", in which it was observed that new young businessmen and radical students were beginning to challenge France's omnipresence, and that Jacques Foccart, the almost legendary eminence grise as Secretary-General for African Affairs, was beginning to lose his touch. 23 Pompidou himself in later trips admitted the need for treaty revisions. B y the winter o f 1972, as seen, Dahomey, Togo, Niger, the Republic o f Congo and Mauritania officially asked for a reconsideration o f their agreements with France, and in Madagascar revolts in part directed against similar agreements, led to the overthrow o f President Tsiranana. Crucial were objections to thefranc zone and to the dominance o f the French banking world, as well as the heavy overlay o f the French cultural and educational presence. B y the end o f 1974, O C A M was in considerable disarray and the voices against ties to France were mounting. The Cameroons withdrew from O C A M in July 1973, partly in the interests o f improving her economic ties with Nigeria and Ghana, and in August o f the same year Madagascar, under General Romantsoa, joined her. 24 B y the end o f 1973 most francophone African states were demanding revisions of the agreements o f the sixties, and Chad's President Tombalbaye was accusing France o f colonialist interference (especially through Jacques Foccart), even while French 23

Newsweek,

January 18, 1971, p. 18. It was also noted that American businessmen were

beginning to penetrate ex-French African territories in increasing numbers, and that President Senghor himself was beginning to study English. Foccart's authority derived from the French President directly, and ran parallel to that o f Pierre Billecocq, head o f the d'État

à la Coopération,

Secrétariat

w h o derived his p o w e r from the Ministry o f Foreign Affairs.

Generally, Foccart's assignment appeared to be to help preserve France's presence in Africa, Billecocq's to handle technical matters involved in the treaties o f cooperation. 24

Philippe Decraene wondered if the C a m e r o o n s ' action was not a " c o u p de g r â c e " (Le

Monde,

July 3, 1973), and after Madagascar's withdrawal, Le Monde,

in an editorial on the

subject, referred to "la peau de chagrin" (August 7, 1973). In the October 1973 issue o f Le Monde Diplomatique,

Bertrand Fessard de Foucault wondered if the decline o f O C A M "did

not mark, in effect, the final phase o f French decolonisation" (p. 10).

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197

troops were helping to suppress the rebellion in the north of the country. Tombalbaye, changing his first name from François to Ngarta, and the name of his capital from Fort-Lamy to Ndjamena ("may they live in peace"), had proclaimed a "cultural revolution". 25 In October 1975, Chad requested the evacuation of all French troops because France had negotiated directly with the rebel kidnappers of Françoise Claustre, a French citizen. Even in Senegal steps had been taken to reconstruct the French educational system, to make it more practical and popular (in 1973), and in 1970 the University of Dakar, by agreement, had become juridically a Senegalese university. Other agreements had provided for the limitation of French troops (to 1,300, from 2,250), the restriction of the hitherto unlimited rights of French citizens in Senegal, and edicts provided for the "senegalization" of some French enterprises. The African state to go the furthest in withdrawing from French control was Madagascar. By agreements in 1973, all research institutes on the island were submitted to "malgachisation"; France's military had largely withdrawn, and the number of French assistants was reduced. Older residents were reported to be demoralized with the loss of the special status they once enjoyed, and French had become, even though favored, virtually a foreign language. In May 1974, the ruling of Niger, Lieutenant-Colonel Kountché, talked of the need for national control of all basic resources and the withdrawal of French troops. In Niger the most important resource France was interested in wai uranium. Kountché, it should be noted, had overthrown Diori Hamani (in April), considered to be one of France's closest friends (under still mysterious circumstances, since the seventy French troops in the country stood passively by). In Guinea, in October 1974, Sekou Touré blamed the most recent attempted coup against himself as having been orchestrated by France. France accommodated herself to this growing disaffection in 1974 by i n t e g r a t i n g t h e w o r k o f t h e Secrétariat Général pour les Affaires Africaines et

Malgaches (Foccart's fortress) into the Ministère de la Coopération (now under Pierre Abelin). This was interpreted by Africans to mean the abandonment of secret diplomacy and intrigue. Stéphane Hessel, as seen, was appointed coordinator of a group of sixteen "missions de dialogue" to help further new policies in Africa - respect for local culture and language was proposed as a guiding Une. 25

Le Monde, June 28, 1974. Tombalbaye was overthrown and killed in a military coup on April 13, 1975. Radical Africans suspected the French commandant Gourvennec, chief information officer and director of the "garde nationale et nomade", of responsibility.

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As far as language was concerned, however, any rebellion against French was less likely in continental Africa than in Madagascar which had a real alternative to French in Malagasy, and where the student slogan "Français, langue d'esclave" had immediate relevance. The French presence culturally was not necessarily dependent upon France's financial, political military predominance. In Paris, May 28-9,1973, at a meeting of the Ministers of Education of the francophone states, many voices were raised to criticize the French system of education abroad for being élitist and for providing unrealistic carbon copies of the metropolitan French system. However, there were also spokesmen who insisted that they would only accept the French system of education at its best, and who saw efforts to domesticate this system in their own countries as paternalistic. What was not questioned was the use of the French language itself as medium of instruction {Jeune Afrique, June 23, 1973, pp. 38-9. Rocheron, "Dans la langue d'Astérix"). These ministers of education, however, were still in the main members of governments which emerged into power out of the cocoon of the French Empire. They represented a small French-trained and largely French-supported élite which might claim to lead the "masses", but who were not of these masses. The future was likely to escape them, sooner or later. Radicals, w h o were often as "French" as those they attacked for corruption and for dependence upon France politically and culturally, on the other hand, would, if and when they assumed power, inherit the problems of their predecessors: government of peoples whose populations were small, whose native languages were multiple, and far from "modernized", whose physical resources were largely underdeveloped, and whose military "clout" was small. The problem of the "colonisabilité" of these states would remain. 26 Francophone states were becoming more independent; the world of the Foccarts could not last - nor that of the Hamanis. But the regimes taking over the helms of power - for the most part military juntas — were doing so in French. 27 M

The term "colonisabilité" was perhaps first used by the Algerian writer Malek Bennabi in his Vocation de l'Islam (Paris 1954). Jean Daniel (1973, pp. 101-3), took it up to apply to Africa in particular. H e asked if, as France's hold waned, she would not simply be replaced by some other world power. This was also the theme of Bridget Bloom, for example inJeune Afrique (July 7, 1973, p. 4). 27 Military juntas had seized power, since 1963, twice in Togo, five times in Dahomey, once in the Central African Republic, once in Mali, once in Niger, and once in Madagascar. By April 1975 the number of military coups in French-speaking sub-Sahara Africa had risen to

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As seen in our discussion of Négritude, African intellectuals and leaders had close contacts with their Caribbean counterparts, figures like Césaire, Fanon, and others. In the Caribbean region, which included two French departments, Martinique and Guadeloupe, and one independent nation whose national language was French, namely Haiti, French was rivalled linguistically most seriously by a derivative of French, créole. The élites of these three areas were fully French in education and culture, but among the masses it was créolisme that threatened the hold of French as voices rose to challenge the social status quo and the power of the establishments. Créole is a generic term for a variety of languages which were once a form of "pidgin" but which, over time, became stabilized. There was nothing to preclude any form of créole from becoming a full-fledged language and serve as a national tongue and vehicle for modernity. The advantage of adopting créole was that it most fully and authentically embodied the identity of the mass of people — the disadvantage was, in the case of its French varieties, in the Caribbean, was that it could make for a restricted cultural provincialism as well as serve to separate francophone Caribbeans from the élites of Africa with w h o m they had been affectively and intellectually associated. Martinique, with a population of some 330,000, and Guadeloupe, with a population of 310,000, had as their popular language a French-based créole, and French as the language of the élites. 28 In both islands school enrollment was almost 100 percent and both had contributed, in spite of their economic backwardness, some very important figures in French literature. Guadeloupe produced Saint-Jean Perse (winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1960) and Guy Tirolien. Martinique produced Aimé eighteen. As indicated, Madagascar was the one state among France's recent wards that seemed seriously intent upon rejection of France's linguistic as well as her material presence. Malagasy, as a national language, was not the problem keeping this nation of six million in a state of confusion and crisis. Ethnic differences between the coastal peoples and the central Merinid (Hova) aristocracy compounded by something of a class struggle between rich and poor, helped account for the troubles that led to the assassination of Colonel Richard Ratsimandrava in 1975 after only one week in power. Of Merinid origin, he had lost favor with some of his own people because of his espousal of a form of populist socialism. His predecessor in power, Tsiranana had been of coastal bourgeois origin, but had lost general favor because he was believed to be a tool of the French. It might be noted that ethnologists do not consider the dominant Madagascar tribes to be African - they are of Indonesian and Polynesian origin. 28 For accounts of French culture in the Antilles see Viatte (1969, pp. 67-81); Claude Florent's series of three articles in Le Monde (January 6, 7, 8, 1970); and Jean Lacouture, "Comment peut-on être Antillais?" Le Monde (August 27, 1970).

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Césaire, René Maran, Edouard Glissant, Joseph Zobel and Frantz Fation. Because of the diglossie culture, and because the itiajority of people were black, there was a definite problem of identity in bòth islands, particularly manifest since the independence movements in Africa. O n e only needed to cite as evidence the writings of Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire. 29 Local heroes included Victor Schoelcher, the French revolutionary liberator of the slaves (in 1848), but also Toussaint Louverture, the hero of Haiti's Struggle for independence. While impressed by the degree to which the citizens of these islands had been assimilated - the tour de France was a national event - Jean Lacouture, in 1970, observed an important growth of political parties favoring autonomy and "créolisme". Some candidates for election considered it advantageous to speak to their constituencies in créole. Lacouture's article, judging by the many letters regarding it received by Le Monde, aroused both interest and concern in France (October 4-5, 1970). O n e of the questions broachëd by him that evoked particular comment was the question of whether it might not be better to use créole, at least in elementary school, as the language of instruction - an idea urged by the "créolistes". T o this suggestion a representative French answer was that of H. Félix, departmental inspector of National Education in Guadeloupe: "I do not think that we will be doing the people of Antilles any favor by isolating them in their language." But it was not easy even if desirable, as Lacouture himself had implied, to "isolate" the Black créole majorities of the two islands from a Third World which was rapidly finding its own way in independence. Félix, of course, might have answered that the closest links of the people of Antilles were to French Black Africa whose principal language of culture was French, not the créole of the Antilles. Haiti, as the only independent nation in the Americas in which French was the official language, was a special case. It was also unusual as being the first South American republic to have gained its independence - this it did in 1804 under the leadership of figures like Toussaint Louverture, Jean Christophe and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. 29

Fanon (1952) dealt specifically with the problem of identity of Martinique blacks. At this time in history, Fanon saw the attraction of assimilation to French culture as the greatest danger to black "authenticity". For a statement of Césaire's views see the interview with him in Le Nouvel Observateur (March 1, 1971, pp. 33-5). T o him metropolitan France treated Martinique as a colony to be exploited. Even more bitter was the Antilles poet Daniel Boukman w h o demanded total independence for Martinique, from his exile in Algiers {Jeune Afrique, March 9, 1971, pp. 50-61).

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In spite of its relative backwardness (90 percent illiteracy and a per capita income of only $70), and of its unpalatable politics under François Duvalier (d. 1971) - not very much exaggerated in Graham Greene's The Comedians - Haiti remained too important a state (with a population of about five million) for France to ignore. Haiti played an important role as an outpost of the French cultural presence - it was because of Haiti that French was one of the languages of the Organization of American States, and it played a leading role in assuring that French became one of the working languages of the United Nations in 1945. Haiti was, in a sense, to South America what, according to Sihanouk, Cambodia once had been to Asia, a French bastion. France provided the republic with a great deal of technical assistance and an organization of prominent French and Haitian writers named France-Haiti (founded 1955) provided an important cultural link. Linguistically the situation in Haiti was very complex. French was the offical language and the language of the élite but perhaps only 10 percent of the population spoke French (school enrollment was only 9.5 percent). The rest spoke a French-derived créole which was 95 percent French as to phonology and vocabulary, but which ignored Latin derived endings, transposed possession and possessor (e.g. Kaijean la: the house of John), included in its vocabulary many words now obsolete in France, and rejected the French pronunciation of the " r " (Esprit 1962, pp. 691-701, Pompilus, "En Haiti"; Viatte 1969, pp. 67-81). A Frenchman hearing it for the first time would not understand it. Créole was also a language of culture to a certain extent—sermons were given in it and a créole text of the Bible was in use. Poets like Jean-Mars who favored a return to African sources and participated in Présence Africaine, helped to promote créole; Félix Morisseau-Leroy translated Antigone into it, G. Gratiant and Emmanuel Paul used it for poetry, and since 1957 political gatherings were often conducted in créole. Jacques J. Zephir predicted that créole was ceasing to be the language of inferiority and low status in Haiti (Présence Francophone, August 1972, pp. 15-26, "La Négritude et le Problème des Langues en Haïti"). Imperatives of social justice and authenticity made it the language of the future, he believed. He observed that since 1955 it had become a language of literature and that even earlier French members of the élite had often resorted to it when they wished to relax among themselves. As well as challenged by "créolisme" the French presence was also threatened by the inevitable pull of the United States, especially since

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World War II when Haiti was isolated from France. 30 American universities were being attended by Haitian students in growing numbers, technical terms as well as American cars were increasingly apparent, and franglais now presented a serious problem. Another threat to French was Spanish because o f Haiti's propinquity to South America and the fact that it bordered on the Dominican Republic. Many students now attended South American and even Spanish universities. It might be noted finally that as with Guadeloupe and Martinique, French tended to be associated with the aristocracy, and it was not strange that popular movements seeking to awaken the masses should increasingly emphasize créole, although, o f course, mass movements in Haiti proper could not be more than clandestine. Following the death in April, 1971 of the embarrassingly authoritarian François Duvalier, French financial and cultural assistance to Haiti was increased. Observers of Haiti argued that the brutality of the Ton Ton Macoute days had been considerably modified, and that an improved political atmosphere was attracting investments under Papa Doc's son, Jean-Claude Duvalier. While not inevitable as legacy, the French language in many Black African states and a part of the Caribbean appeared to be an integral part o f national identities and to be the medium through which authenticity would be sought. There were, to be sure, linguistic alternatives - vernaculars, forms o f créole - and these had their supporters. The future was not closed, but as education became increasingly universalized, the options would tend to fade. French, once rooted in the masses, would become the language o f national identity, but it would almost certainly be transformed in many ways to embody dimensions of cultural and historical heritages quite different from France's own. That this could have enriching cultural results had already been shown in literature produced, often in collaboration, by Africans and Caribbeans.

Haiti was temporarily ruled by the United States from 1915 to 1934. By 1972 about 50 percent of Haiti's imports came from the United States with only about 4 percent from France. 30

Conclusions

"Sure, sociable, reasonable, it is no longer only the French language, it is the human language" (Rivarol 1784).

In an insightful passage of Making It, Norman Podhoretz (1969), wondering why, both to himself and to many others all over the world, American culture and literature had become objects of universal significance, speculated: Let a province become really powerful and it will immediately cease being regarded either by itself or others, as a province. Its history will be studied, its opinions will be heeded, and its writers will be read and translated. And because any phenomenon has a way of acquiring value merely through the amount of attention paid to it, the culture o f this ex-province will soon be discovered always to have contained an importance and a beauty invisible to the mind and the e y e . . . [Give] . . . Finland enough power and enough wealth, and there would soon be a Finnish department in every university in the world . . ." 1

At first Podhoretz had been tempted to believe that because what was Western and what was "universal" were the same, America must n o w be the cultural realm of the "transcendant spirit". But on second thought, he came to the conclusion that this was Hegelian nonsense and that the "universality" attributed to any one expression of culture was in fact only a function of historical good fortune, an illusion sustained by power and success. Following Podhoretz's remarks, one might suggest that the "universality" Rivarol and others attributed to the French language was a heritage of 1

Pp. 67-8. André Fontaine in "La Bataille du Français" (Le Monde, May 27-8, 1971) rejected any necessary connection between material power and cultural and linguistic influence. He pointed to the hellenization of the Roman Empire after the fall of Athens as evidence.

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the time w h e n France was "la grande nation". Thomas Mann observed, in Buddenbrooks, that a star which has long disappeared in outer space might still be visible o n earth. So, also, the m y t h o f a nation might survive this nation's period o f glory. Perhaps the reason the m y t h of the "universality" of the French language, and o f France's culture, was still a reality to so m a n y was that the end of France's predominance, with the fall o f N a p o l e o n III, if not Napoleon I, and then the collapse of the second French empire, was relatively recent in history. O f course, to belittle the extravagant and absolute claims o f a Rivarol was not to argue that French was not "universal" in a more limited sense, in the sense o f being, along with English (even if second to it in importance), a major language of communication in the world between very diverse peoples, and a language quite properly used as a working vehicle in international congresses and agencies. 2 A s such, French remained a m o n g millions w h o s e maternal language was not French, a cultural asset o f a great importance, an opening to a larger world, a guarantee against cultural isolation and dessication. 3 A n d because it was the language o f a sizeable bloc o f peoples, it served as a barrier against the dull conformity that might come if any single language, be it English or another, were to dominate the world, and for certain peoples it served as a source of political solidarity and so independence. O n e might qualify the analogy with Mann's dead star also by observing 2

A n interesting reflection on the role of universal languages from a humanistic point of view was that of Hourani (1961, p. 158). H e stated in summarizing the discussions at a seminar held in Rhodes, October 1958, on "Representative Government and Public Liberties": "As I have sat here in the last week, listening to our discussions, I have sometimes asked myself whether discussions so frank and free and mutually comprehending could be held between our successors fifty years from now: coming f r o m different parts of the world, will they have, as we have now in the twilight of the great empires, a common education and universe of discourse, and the two universal languages in one or both of which we all live?" 3 Corbett (1972) saw this argument, one made by people like Senghor, as something of a rationalization of vested interest, and Toynbee (1934—1961, V, 493-4), in his analysis of social disintegration considered that the universalization of the language of a powerful state was an indication of "breakdown", and that the price this power paid for the universalization of its language was to see this language lose its "native subtleties and niceties" and become bastardized. I am not wholly persuaded by Corbett - the poetry of writers like Cesaire, and Senghor himself, would seem to be evidence to the contrary, and while I do not intend to debate the "Toynbee question" here, it could be asked if the universalization of languages might not be more than symptoms of decay, that they might facilitate the way to Toynbee's syncretistic union of the great religions, or at least open to the possibility of a world community as the only alternative to mass perdition.

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that France still was a sizeable state even if not a super-power, that she was only relatively weak industrially, technologically and militarily. 4 In any case, if history could be used as evidence, there had been several languages in the past that played a universal role well after the original home of the language had ceased to be an important power, or where it had even ceased to exist as an independent entity - Greek, Akkadian, Aramic, were examples of this. For many peoples to whom it was a legacy of "colonialism", French remained quite properly a valued means of communication in international organizations such as the United Nations as well as an access to modernity. The increasing spread of English was, of course, a challenge and a threat to the "universality" of French, as was the factor of nationalism, for which language was so powerful a symbol and dimension. But the factor of nationalism did not mean, of course, that universal languages would be abandoned. A universal language might be maintained on a bilingualist basis or, should it cease to be a vehicle of national culture, it could survive as an instrument of convenience, as did French, for example, even among many Flemish. Whatever the future might bring, France would doubtlessly attempt to maintain its linguistic presence overseas. Speculating on the future, in 1973, Joshua Fishman, an American sociolinguist, and Jacques Cellard, Le Monde's language expert, each provided a scenario of the possible future of French (Cellard 1973; Fishman 1973). Cellard believed, that with the increasing economic integration of Europe, French might become the working language of Eastern Europe (Russia had 40,000 teachers of French), and that in the Third World, French might benefit f r o m Algeria's becoming the key power in Africa. But even on the basis of such optimistic assumptions, French in 2004 would have only 250 million speakers (one fifteenth in a world with a population of four billion). One of the hurdles to the expansion of French, Cellard argued, was its "elitisme" and the rivalry of English which, out of paranoia, Frenchmen themselves encouraged by studying it to the exclusion of other world languages. France had three options, he said, inertia (while watching Europe become anglicized), * T w o surveys in 1972 predicted that within two decades France might become the fourth major world economic power (in GNP) after the U.S.A., Russia and Japan. O n e survey prepared by the planning and development division of Gibb and Hill, Inc., a consulting engineering firm, predicted this by 1990. The second survey, made by the Paris branch of the Hudson Institute, predicted that by 1980 France would reach the present American standard of living (International Herald Tribune, January 18, 1973). But this was before the oil crisis, especially the quadrupling of prices, had thrown all into confusion and made predictions impossible.

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élitisme (refusing to compromise on quality and settling for only a stratospheric prestige), or a strategy of encouraging bilingualism of various sorts, home and abroad, and extending French by teaching a more simple and practical version of it. Cellard, by way of a warning, observed that languages, like cultures, were mortal. Fishman suspected that by the year 2000 the number of unofficial regionalist "dialects" would have greatly increased because of national (though not necessarily separatist) feelings. Many more people would speak "dialects" as well as the "official" languages. Within the francophone area itself, while for many French would remain the vehicle of "la vraie culture", English would spread increasingly because it was less tied to a "flagrant" cultural chauvinism, and because of its usefulness in commercial and technological fields (including computer science). While Fishman tended to welcome the spread of languages as a way for an increasing number of people to experience a feeling of authenticity, Karl Deutsch and others saw it as a phenomenon of the times, but as dangerously fissiparous, and divisive of mankind. Both Deutsch and Fishman would, however, reject the view expressed by Edward Sapir (1933), in times more hopeful for internationalists, that growing international integration, the rise of "transnational vocabularies" and the like, would limit the number of "dialects" seeking full status as languages. The multiplication of languages as symbols and dimensions of identity might indeed threaten a common human identity, but, on the other hand, a refusal to come to terms with contemporary regionalist struggles for linguistic identity might transform opportunities for cultural enrichment into "totalist" revolutionary thrusts, even more dangerous to common humanity. In 1975 each area in which "the French fact" existed, had its own particular value for France. Thus, in Canada France had a populous ally in N o r t h America, and in Haiti, an influence in South America; in Lebanon it had an entrée into the Arab world, in Cambodia into Asia, and in Belgium and Luxembourg it had support for possibly making French the language of a united Europe. In all these cases, and others, the French were well aware of the economic and political benefits they derived indirectly from the presence of their language, and that the preservation and extension of this presence was more than simply a matter of sentiment or cultural prestige. Those w h o spoke French would not only buy French books, they would also probably order French medicines, industrial equipment and they would, in arenas like the United Nations Assembly, tend to view

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France's position with sympathy, especially if they were recipients of French technical as well as educational assistance. Another possible value to France of "the French fact" might be, and to a certain extent was, if one considered the original way in which the Senghors and Césaires had been using it, to provide the French language and French culture with a freshness and a new vitality the First World might have lost in losing touch with its own "Orient", as Jacques Berque (1970) used the term. 5 Conversely, for those peoples in the French orbit, their relationship to France and their involvement with the French language and French culture had particular advantages. To Walloons, for example, French provided an outlet to a larger world and a shield of identity; to French Canadians, French was a guarantee of identity; to many Christian Lebanese, French was a symbol of their refusal to be absorbed into a larger Muslim world; and to many South Americans French might seem to serve as a barrier against Americanization. But in several parts of the Third World important doubts had been expressed - not as to the value of the French language as a means of modernization nor as to the cultural value of having French as a second language - but over the density, the massiveness of the French presence this, in particular, in Black and North Africa. These doubts were thoroughly aired in the survey made by the editors of Esprit (1970). Among the questions raised by the coopérants interviewed were these: Did not the massive assistance France provided some states help to preserve rather than change unsound administrative and educational practices, and help to sustain unjust social political systems in which a few dominated the many? And did this aid not contribute to alienation by inculturating the young with specifically French bourgeois values and tastes and so constitute what on c coopérant called ' " . . . a sort of intellectual pacte colonial', one which served as a barrier to the discovery by a people of its own proper cultural authenticity?" (p. 92). Related to this problematic was the question of whether the French presence could be supported much longer through the medium of a system of education - prompted by France and desired by many of the 5

I understand Berque to be saying in this unusually difficult and opaque essay that the modern developed nations are in need of recovering elements of their past which are still part of the life of the Third World - that rather than regard the living traditions of the Third World as only a matter of culture lag that will disappear with modernity, these be seen as possible sources of psychic and cultural renewal and revitalization. This point is also made by Northrop (1946).

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present élite in the francophone area — which, however appropriate to a developed bourgeois society, might not be suitable in the context of a developing world. Did not the French model perpetuate an unjust class system, flood markets with unemployable and hence radical young m e n w h o were culturally rootless? Algeria might be taking the lead with plans, for 1985, for a radically new elementary school system which was to emphasize the technical and encourage an experimental and participatory approach to education. Such a project need not, of course, affect the French linguistic presence. But prejudices die hard - to many leaders of the Third World, assimilated to French culture, it was difficult to divorce the French language f r o m other dimensions of French culture. Another problematic, one which Robert de Montvalon discussed in the issue of Esprit cited, was whether the term "coopération" itself might not be a misnomer since it usually lacked any feature of mutuality. T r u e cooperation, he suggested, was only possible "through the destruction of the old universalism manufactured by the West", which in effect, was only a particularism that had become all powerful. 6 Perhaps, he proposed, real cooperation could be realized if the West, as well as giving, began to appreciate and learn f r o m the wisdom of other peoples, and adopt an approach to nature, for example, which emphasized an adaptation to nature rather than its conquest - living in harmony with nature rather than seeking to dominate it as had been the Western Faustian wont. For such a plea as Montvalon's to be more than mere sentimental well-wishing, of course, it was not enough for Westerners to be more flexible and tolerant. It was also vital for the emerging peoples of the Third World to take cultural initiative, as Algeria appeared to be doing. Some nations of the Third World, because they possessed resources such as oil and uranium, were in excellent positions to mould their o w n destinies, but only provided that they develop cultural and social, as well as economic, infrastructures, to turn immediate advantage into long-range selfsufficiency. But, unfortunately, because of their colonialist legacies and because of the severe demands of modernity, to many leaders of developing countries their traditional past appeared to be only a matter of "culture lag", their aspiration was to modernize their nations according to ' "Notes sur une coopération qui n'est pas encore commencés" (pp. 225-37, p. 228). N o t e the resemblance of this idea to Berque's in L'Orient second (1970). The West, according to Montvalon, is based upon dominating rather than conforming to nature; Western students, in part, were rebelling against the sterility that had resulted from this philosophy, in the sixties.

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Western models, whether these were radical or conservative. A nation like France, in a real sense, had not alternative but to assist as she was doing, or else allow her protégés, in m a n y cases, to sink. And in this perspective the extension by France of educational and technical assistance, and so of her values, objectively, if not always subjectivity, was an act of generosity. 7 B u t for many Frenchmen the radiation of culture was m o r e than only an act of generosity, it was an imperative, even a compulsion — it was an aspect of France's identity. Similarly, to m a n y peoples a m o n g w h o m "the French fact" existed, the role to be assigned to French in their educational systems and in their public life was also an aspect of identity, a part of the destiny they chose. A n u m b e r of general, theoretical, observations m i g h t be elicited f r o m this study of the drama of the French language, observations which m i g h t in turn serve as bases for further and m o r e searching consideration of the mysterious relationship between language and national identity. It might well be, of course, that these various hypotheses are relevant to the case of French alone, because of this nation's unusual preoccupation with language and because of the unusual role her language has played in the m o d e r n world. B u t even if this is so, the questions these hypotheses raise are of relevance to an intriguing and important modern drama of millions of contemporaries. First, a people w h o s e language has b e c o m e "universal" for particular historical reasons may be tempted to see itself as a people with a special mission to play in the world, and w h e n this mission is challenged or rejected, to react traumatically, to experience something of a loss of nerve. 8 Second, besides sentimental disappointment, the rejection of the " u n i versal" language entails the loss of concrete advantages, political and 7

President P o m p i d o u , d u r i n g his visit t o C h a d in J a n u a r y 1972, a n s w e r e d testily w h e n asked at a press conference if France was not neo-colonialist: "Yes w e are neo-colomalist. T h e r e is n o d o u b t of i t . . . T h e p r o o f is that w e are t r y i n g to help this c o u n t r y develop, f o r m its cadres, that w e are p r o v i d i n g it w i t h material and financial assistance, that w e are d o i n g all that w e can t o develop it so that it m i g h t remain independent. If this is neo-colonialism long live neo-colonialism,!" (Le Monde, January 30-1, 1972). An alternative point of view was Frantz Fanon's. H e argued the A f r o - A s i a n w o r l d be c o m p e n s a t e d for centuries of exploitation. 8 François Furet (1967) saw this "loss of n e r v e " as operating c o n t e m p o r a n e o u s l y a m o n g m a n y French intellectuals w h o , he claimed, had been w o n over to the ahistorical position of structuralism because of a loss of confidence in the universality of France. " H a v i n g been expelled b y history", Furet w r o t e , " t h e France in w h i c h h e [the intellectual] lives consents the m o r e willingly t o expel h i s t o r y . "

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economic, and at the same time may seem an indication that political and economic control and influence are dwindling. Third, those who challenge the hold of the universal language are challenging it because the language no longer appears to them to be universal — it is now seen as a bearer of alien values, a source of alienation f r o m one's own legacy, a particular medium serving the interests of another particular people. In an age of modernization and nationalism rejection may be something of a vote of no confidence in the "universal" nation's educational and technological institutions - its language is n o w to be replaced by one's o w n language as the language of culture and education. Fourth, in this age of nationalism and modernization, the temptation to make use of one's o w n language is crucial, but for want of a single mass language or because one's language is too "primitive" in terms of modernity, a compromise may be necessary. The "universal" language may be kept and even extended to become the mass language as well as the language of culture and education (or one might resort to another language that seems to have "universal" importance). Fifth, where the "universal" language is maintained for want of an alternative it is rationalized to be an authentic dimension of one's personality or it is rationalized because of its "universality" to be an appropriate medium for the expression of one's unique personality. 9 Sixth, to the lower classes, however, this language may not appear to be universal — its use may be seen as neo-colonialist, its users among the élite to be promoting it for their own class interests. This rejection of the universal language may take the form of preferring to use localized "dialects" of the metropolitan language, créole for example. Seventh, in all of these instances language is only one factor among others constituting the personality of a people, but it is, in an age of nationalism, positively one of identity, negatively of alienation — in 9

Regarding social and national modernization, Fishman (1972a, pp. 191-223) proposes a typology of the various attitudes of new nations toward the "Language of Wider C o m m u n i cations" (LWC), what I have been calling a "universal language". A-model nations have no integrating "Great Tradition" and hold the LWC to be symbol and medium of unification and modernization (Gambia, and the Cameroons among the francophone states, for example). Uni-model nations have a single Great Tradition and use the LWC provisionally while seeking to modernize the traditional language without forfeiting their national "authenticity" (Algeria, for example). And Multi-model nations seek to unify separate Great Traditions by using the L W C as a unifying compromise - at the same time they strive to modernize their traditional languages (India, for example, or perhaps Lebanon f r o m the Lebanese Christian point of view).

Conclusions

211

Lafayette, Louisiana, people will say, "Soyons fiers de parler français"; in Madagascar students will cry "Français, langue d'esclave". As symbol, the French language continues to arouse passions, favorable or antagonistic. The destiny o f the French language is protean. It has taken many forms including franglais, franlibanais and créole, and it has been the medium o f some remarkable literature giving voice to sensibilities quite different from those of the "métropole" - Négritude, for example. It has been a medium for millions who prize their French heritage, and for others who reject it and have rebelled against it. It has been a crucial component of the anguished identities o f men caught up in the world between decolonization and nation-building. Part o f France's own identity is the radiation o f her language, but at the same time many who speak French consider it to be their own property, a dimension o f their own identities, related to but distinct from, in their view, France's identity. Much o f what has been said about the French language in these pages, and o f the drama o f its modern destiny, is true of Western culture as a whole, o f which this language has been so important a symbol, and appears to remain an abiding vehicle, however problematically. If not the privileged "human language", as Rivarol thought, nevertheless French remains an important and a universal language for much o f humanity.

Postscript

A complete updating would only add detail to the conceptual framework presented, detail that would be dated by the time of publication. The concepts, if they are valid, remain the same, and, except on detail, the lines of national experience presented as examples remain, essentially, the same also. In the case of Lebanon, the outcome of the civil war was too uncertain to comment upon. During this war, 1975-1976, France tried to mediate to bring peace, and in May 1976, President Giscard d'Estaing even proposed sending in French troops, but nothing came of this. In the Middle East, in general, France pursued her effort to be regarded as the Arabs' best Western friend, but on the economic level shé fell behind even Sweden and the Netherlands in her exports to the Arab world (in 1976), as well as behind the U.S.A., West Germany and Italy. In North Africa, tensions of the sort discussed already continued to plague French-Algerian relations. In 1977 the chief irritant was France's recognition of the annexation of the larger part of ex-Spanish Sahara by Morocco. In her book, A Street in Marrakech (New York 1975, p. 80), Elizabeth W. Fernea confirmed the fact that the French lycée still had enormous prestige in Morocco, and that many government and business officers still conducted their work in French. In sub-Sahara Africa, in spite of continuing instability in many countries, Zaire in particular, French culture still held its own. Yves Person, in a vitriolic attack on this hold of the French, testified to this presence, even if he did believe it to be pernicious and a force for alienation, a denial of authenticity ("Mort des langues africaines?" in Jeune Afrique, May 13, 1977, pp. 38-40). In June 1977, France ended her last direct control over an African people when the Republic of Djibouti came into being. Outside the francophone area, the political importance of language was shown when riots in Soweto, South Africa, were in part sparked off in June 1976 by the government's decision to make Afrikaans a subject in the public

Postscript

213

schools. In the Indian Ocean, inhabitants of the small island of Mayotte in the independent Comoro Islands insisted by a large majority that they remain under French sovereignty, an issue that still pended. French culture maintained a precarious hold in Pondicherry in India where, according to the terms of a treaty between France and India, a French lycée still functioned in 1977. O n the North American continent, in Louisiana, in addition to promoting the teaching of classical French, minor efforts were being made in 1977 to teach Cajun French as a regular language in schools and so to preserve it. In the field of the politics of language the most dramatic developments were the provincial elections of November 1975 and the coming into power of the Parti Québécois under René Lévesque in Quebec. This opened up the possibility of independence, but pending a plebiscite to be held in regard to this, steps were taken to make French the exclusive language of the province. The Lévesque government, on April 1, 1977, issued an explosive White Paper declaring Quebec "a French society", repudiating bilingualism, and laying the basis for legislation that would provide, among other things, that henceforth foreign immigrants to Quebec would have to send their children to French language schools. Canadian unity had never faced so serious a threat, and never had Premier Trudeau's vision of a bicultural Canada been so ominously challenged. In Europe the most significant development was the conclusion of a "pacte communitaire" in Belgium, which some saw as a historic resolution of the issue which had threatened to split the country apart. Presided over by Prime Minister Léo Tindemans, in May 1977, the Christian Socialists, the Socialists, the Front des Francophones Bruxellois, and the Flemish Volksunie formed a coalition to promote this compromise. According to it, considerable autonomy would be given the three regions of Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels — each with its own assembly. T o please the Volksunie, Brussels would remain limited to its present nineteen communes, and, to please the francophones, those living on the periphery of the city would be provided with the same facilities and rights as the Flemish majority in the capital. These were the critical decisions among many other agreements in this highly complicated effort to maintain Belgium's unity. In France herself, problems rooted in the demands of ethnic minorities to have their identities recognized continued in 1976 and 1977 to cause problems, even if on a less violent level than they did in neighboring Spain.

214

Postscript

The most serious clashes occurred in May 1976, when a new separatist movement, the Association of Corsican Patriots, exploded bombs in various parts of the island and, in September, blew up a French aeroplane at Ajaccio Airport. There were still Frenchmen who were appalled at the ethnic upsurge in their midst, and still felt, as did the Jacobin Bertrand Barère during the time of the Revolution, that ". . . Federalism and superstition . . . speak bas Breton; emigration and hatred of the Republic speak German; the counter-revolution speaks Italian, and fanaticism, Basque" (see Certeau et al. (1975). A forceful defense of linguistic ethnicity is M o r v a n Lebesque, Comment

peut-on

être Breton:

essai sur la démocratie

française (Paris, 1970), a work I encountered only recently. France in 1977 still sustained her "mission civilisatrice" — some 90 lycées of the Mission Laique operated abroad in addition to many private and secondary schools, and France's coopérants continued to serve the world over. French remained, even if France's profile was low, a shield of identity or a problematic for many, and an apparent inevitability for others. 1977

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