France launched the commemorations for next year's 100-year anniversary of the start of World War I on Thursday with a solemn speech by French President François Hollande at the Elysée presidential palace, reports FRANCE 24.
France’s leader has said that he wants the programme of commemorative events to unfold in a spirit of national unity, as well as friendship between the countries involved in the conflict that ravaged Europe from 1914 to 1918, causing nearly 1.7 million French deaths.
But according to Hollande, the commemoration will also be an opportunity to pay homage to all soldiers who fought for France, including those who hailed from what were then French colonies. “Today, I would like no French soldier who shed blood in battle to be forgotten,” he said in his address, singling out the 430,000 troops “who took part in a war that was not necessarily theirs”.
Indeed, certain historians and observers have voiced dismay at what they say has been a trivialisation of the role of such soldiers in the French collective memory of the war.
“African troops actively participated in World War I. Their contribution was crucial,” Charles Onana, a French journalist and essayist who has written widely on 20th century French and African history, told FRANCE 24. “But apart from the villages and rural regions where they were present on the ground, the larger French public isn’t necessarily aware of that. I’ve often been faced with high school and university students who knew nothing about these men’s engagement.”
France, then a colonial power, called on roughly 500,000 African men to fight alongside the 8 million soldiers from mainland France. Participating in what was referred to as the “colonial army” were 175,000 Algerians, 40,000 Moroccans, 80,000 Tunisians and 180,000 sub-Saharan Africans, or “Senegalese infantrymen”, as they were called.
Read more of this report from FRANCE 24.