At the beginning, when detailed plans were first unveiled, it seemed simply a hobby horse for the sixth president of the Fifth Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy (1). The purpose of the proposed Maison d'histoire de France, a museum devoted to French history and due to open in 2015, was to focus on “national identity”, a subject that became a key theme of Sarkozy's presidency as he sought to regain support on the far-right of the political spectrum.
From the start it faced opposition from two main quarters. One was from staff at the National Archive's imposing hôtel de Soubise in the Marais district of Paris, where the new museum is to be based. The other from historians and politicians who feared that the entire project was simply ideological or poor history, or both. “Archaic and childish” is how some have described the project.
In an interview with The New York Times in 2011 Nicolas Offenstadt, a professor of history at the Sorbonne university in Paris, summed up much of the opposition to the Maison d'histoire de France among academics, describing it as “Bling-Bling history”, using a phrase often employed to describe Sarkozy's style of presidency.
“Sarkozy said this was a museum to give French people a stronger sense of identity, that history is the cement that binds together French people. Whose history? ‘Soul’ is not a subject for scientists and historians. It is a moral and political concept,” said Offenstadt, referring to the comment by Sarkozy's culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand that the museum would shed light on France's “soul”.
He added: “If we need any history museum, it would be a world history museum, not a French history museum, to give us a real perspective on who we are, and what is France today.”
However, during 2011 some of the academic controversy began to die down when a high-powered steering committee of experts was set up to oversee the role and function of the new museum. Its head was respected historian Jean-Pierre Rioux, a Christian Democrat, supporter of the centrist MoDem party and someone known for independent thought. He told The New York Times that: “This museum’s sin is only that it was created by Nicolas Sarkozy."
Among the 20 members of the committee, too, were a half a dozen experts from the Left, including Benjamin Stora, a leading authority on Algerian history, Pascal Ory, an expert on the history of fascism, Éric Deroo, an historian and filmmaker specializing in colonial history, and Dominique Missika, an expert on the German Occupation of France in World War Two and a producer at France Culture public radio station. A further four members of the committee are experts not known for their right-leaning politics.
Then in January 2012 the administrative structure of the Maison d'histoire de France was set up with Maryvonne de Saint Pulgent at its head. Of the Right politically, she is known as an intelligent, competent and determined administrator. She brought together a board of directors for the museum that reflected different strands of opinion. In particular she astutely appointed Krzysztof Pomian to the board.
Pomian, a Polish historian, is close to the celebrated French historian Pierre Nora, an authority on national identity and a member of the prestigious French Academy, who in 2010 wrote an open letter to the culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand outlining his opposition to the history museum project. Pomian's appointment was widely taken as a sign that the influential Nora no longer opposed the scheme in the same way.
Saint Pulgent also appointed the director of the National Archives, Agnès Magnien, to the board. This sent out the signal that the Maison d'histoire de France was no longer to be seen as a “cuckoo” in the nest of the National Archives - as had been the perception – but was a co-resident of the site in the Marais.
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1: Successive presidents have overseen the creation of major cultural projects intended to serve as lasting legacies of their time in office. François Mitterrand (president 1981 to 1995), for example, commissioned the Louvre Pyramid in Paris and Jacques Chirac (president 1995 to 2007) oversaw the building of the Musée du Quai Branly, the largest museum to be built in Paris since the Pompidou centre – which itself takes its name from President Georges Pompidou (president 1969 to 1975) who championed its construction.
'Rather than get rid of it, let's enrich it'
And now that anti-Sarkozy sentiment is no longer there to fan the flames of opposition, what is to become of the Maison d'histoire de France? Staff at the National Archives went on strike on May 21st as part of their ongoing protest against the reorganization of the archive service. Many of the archives – 210 kilometres of files - are now being transferred to a new site at Pierrefitte-sur-Seine in the northern suburbs of Paris in a re-housing project that predates plans for the Maison d'histoire.
However, management at the National Archives say that with fewer files to handle they can better carry out their main functions; collecting new material, conserving existing ones and making them available to researchers. In addition the National Archives will be able to open up more of its fine buildings and gardens to the general public.
Maryvonne de Saint Pulgent is herself tight-lipped on the future of the museum. Yet behind her administrative reserve one can sense, on the one hand, the feeling that the Left will re-appropriate the museum project, and on the other the conviction that the administrative body running it will not be dissolved.
Indeed, it has been apparent since the summer of 2011 that a change in approach to the museum has been taking place on the Left. In his book Le Rêve français ('The French Dream', published by Privat) the recently-elected François Hollande showed a certain enthusiasm for a history museum in France, rather than about France. This semantic difference reveals a desire to enlarge the original concept of the museum.
Pascal Ory, who is on the steering committee, hints at the changes when he says cautiously that “the subtlety of a judiciously transformed institution will adapt perfectly to society's demands”. He is personally pleased that the original idea for the museum with its permanent exhibitions – including the throne of Dagobert (1) – has been “buried”.
Maryvonne de Saint Pulgent, insists, meanwhile that the Maison d'histoire de France remains a museum, even if it has no permanent collections, following the example of the Centre Pompidou in Metz in north-east France. Ory accepts that the museum must provide a “home” for exhibition space but says that one of the attractions of the project is its “strong virtual dimension” which, as an internet portal, forum and focal point of a network, will allow for “major collective reflections on our past”. This approach has not fallen on deaf ears and since the presidential election a number of historians have begun to show their interest in the project.
Benjamin Stora, who is close to President Hollande, joined the steering committee when the history museum project was officially hated by the Left. He has told Mediapart that while the museum concept had to and has changed, the project should continue. “I do not see the point in stopping everything, in cutting off heads to put an end to Sarkozy's heritage. The Arab World Institute was launched by [President Valéry] Giscard [d'Estaing]! Let's discuss the name of this museum, which could change, but above all let's enrich it!”
“Rather than simply get rid of it, let's take advantage of the opportunity to integrate into a general history of France those histories usually put in ghettos (slavery, colonisation, the war in Algeria) with sometimes their own related museums, for example the harkis (2), pieds-noirs (3), immigrants,” says Stora.
The historian continues: “Sarkozy wanted a history filled with light, banishing all repentance. Thanks to an independent steering committee we can, on the contrary, introduce elements of shade and rather than searching for vague syntheses we can highlight a sometimes tragic history with its divergent interpretations."
And he concludes: “Fundamentally the question for the Left remains that of its relationship to the nation. Should one throw the history of France overboard in the name of a global approach? Should one leave it to the Right – and thus the extreme Right lying in ambush - so that in five years we have nothing at all?”
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1: Dagobert I (603 AD – 639 AD) was king of the Franks and generally considered to be the last powerful Merovingian king. The throne in question is part of a collection of the National Library of France. It was last used under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804.
2: These were Algerian Muslim volunteers who fought for the French Army in the Algerian War that took place from 1954 to 1962. The terms now covers them and their descendants living in mainland France, of whom there are around half a million. They were widely regarded as having been abandoned by the French state after the end of the Algerian War, as President Nicolas Sarkozy formally acknowledged in March 2012.
3: Literally meaning “blackfoots”, the term refers to French and other Europeans who lived in Algeria before independence.
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English version: Michael Streeter