The symbol of the foreigner in French history

Résumé du document

The word foreigner is strongly connected to the idea of Nation; indeed it is the creation of the Nation that in turn generated this new meaning given to the word foreigner. The creation of the nation drew a line between national and non national, between citizens and foreigners. To some historians, this Nation building process took a very long time, others underline that even though the process as a whole might be long, and one can single out critical moments during which decisive steps were taken. In the case of France the night of the 4th of august 1789 is often perceived as one of those steps: as the privileges of the nobility were abolished, the French became one people and therefore citizens. It was only from then on that the idea of a foreigner could emerge in opposition to this new group. There is therefore a question hovering above the role played by the figure of the foreigner in the Nation building and the discourse about the Nation that contributed to the Nation building process. How did this representation of the foreigner evolve and did it play any part in the Nation building process?

To begin, one should start by underlining that up until the 19th century, the word foreigner did not mean somebody coming from outside the realm or the country. This should be explored in two ways, first the reference to foreign origins in the monarchic mythology and second the figure of the foreigner as the outsider, the one who comes from outside the known sphere and the images related to that figure.

Extraits

[...] Finally, one of the advantages of the Trojan myth was that it was a pagan myth and it gave the monarchy a path of legitimization that did not go through the Church. This seems to be of importance as the Kings of France at times had very tense relations with the Popes. But on the other hand various foreign references were also at times called upon, like the biblical tradition. In one the kings of France are of the line of David and eventually in a straight line from Adam as to underline the Christian quality of the crown. [...]

[...] And it led to the implementation of assimilationism which played a key role in French history. Of course the first waves of migrants, the Italians and the Belgiums, would be assimilated into the French population or would return to their country. But the question would come again for new groups of migrants and in a very acute way for the colonial subjects of the French Empire. For these subjects came on the metropolitan soil to fight during the two world wars and after the decolonization many of the former subjects would come to France to work and perhaps settle. [...]

[...] First of all one might find some interesting references to the figure of the foreigner in the myths of the origin of the French Monarchy. It is interesting to note along the lines of Colette Beaune's capital work[1] that the French Monarchy from the 7th century and up to the 16th century nurtured the reference to a Trojan origin. Indeed the chroniclers in works like Historia Francorum or Gesta regum francorum trace back the origin of the Franks as a people to a Trojan migration after the fall of Troy. [...]

[...] They mostly came in two forms. The first one was to tax the foreigners to compensate the losses triggered by their sojourn in France. But it was unpractical and most of all it was sensitive to tax foreigners in a time of free trade. The diplomats insisted that such a tax would isolate France in Europe and make things harder. The middle ground was to at least demand that the foreigners register every time they settled in a new place. [...]

[...] Bibliography : Colette Beaune, Naissance de la nation France Editions Gallimard, 431p Dornel La france hostile. Socio-Histoire de la xénophobie Hachette littérature. Weber, E., Peasants into Frenchmen, The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914, Stanford University Press EP Thomson, the Moral economy of the English crowd in the 18th century Past and Present, No (Feb., 1971), pp. 76-136. Colette Beaune, Naissance de la nation France. Dornel La france hostile. Socio-Histoire de la xénophobie Weber, E., Peasants into Frenchmen, The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914. [...]