Jean-François Figeac teaches contemporary history at Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence. He publishes “France and the Orient, From Louis XV to Emmanuel Macron” with Passés Composés.
FIGAROVOX. - From François I to Jacques Chirac, France is said to have a privileged relationship with the Arab world. In your book, you partly try to correct this received idea. Does this mean that France is dreaming of a friendship which in reality never existed? What do you attribute this belief to? What is it really ?
Jean-Francois FIGEAC. -
This belief is due to two hard-to-find myths.
The first, forged within the framework of the Arab policy of France under the Fifth Republic, considered that France has always had a historical role to play in the East since the kings of France.
The second is inherited from work within the movement of
postcolonial studies
advocating a multicultural political agenda: France would have an oriental heritage that should now be assumed.
In reality, apart from the exception of Lebanon, with which a special bond was woven in the middle of the 19th century, France's friendship with the Arab world remained occasional depending on the times.
There was never a consistency in the matter, but rather the alternation of phases of good understanding and phases of mistrust.
For example, a moment of tension during the period of decolonization was followed by a period of rapprochement after General de Gaulle took a pro-Palestinian position following the Six Day War in 1967. It is certain that these irenic relations are gone today, both because of the competition that France faces from
soft power
, than because of the rise of radical Islamism which reinforces incomprehension vis-à-vis the French model of secularism.
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In the perspective of the relationship between France and the Orient, should we distinguish the question of the relationship to Islam on the one hand, and to the Orient on the other? Or, on the contrary, are these two sides of the same coin? What cultural aspect does this imply?
Historically, the relationship with Islam is an important issue of the French presence in the Middle East (
via
the persistence of the idea of the crusade, notably through the protection of the Christians of the East and of the Holy Places), but he is not the only one.
There are originally other issues, particularly commercial, related to what was called the Ladders of the Levant under the Old Regime.
French diplomacy could be completely dissociated from logic linked to what some might be tempted to call a clash of civilizations in the face of Islam.
Thus, during the Crimean War, from 1853 to 1856, the French, allied with the British, sought to defend the Sultan and Ottoman Caliph against the threat of the Russian Tsar who made the Christian reconquest of Constantinople a major issue.
The tolerance of the Sublime Porte towards Christian minorities had contributed to this rapprochement.
However,
for fifty years, we can see the appearance of new religious logics.
The Lebanese laboratory and the massacres of which Christians were victims in the 1980s constituted a first manifestation of this.
The institutionalization of Salafist Islam with Daesh, as well as the clearly hostile diplomacy of certain states such as President Erdoğan's Turkey, has further contributed to refocusing Eastern issues around the question of Islam.
It is obvious that this trend intersects with domestic political issues, with the rise of communitarianism in the suburbs and tensions around this subject within French public opinion.
The Lebanese laboratory and the massacres of which Christians were victims in the 1980s constituted a first manifestation of this.
The institutionalization of Salafist Islam with Daesh, as well as the clearly hostile diplomacy of certain states such as President Erdoğan's Turkey, has further contributed to refocusing Eastern issues around the question of Islam.
It is obvious that this trend intersects with domestic political issues, with the rise of communitarianism in the suburbs and tensions around this subject within French public opinion.
The Lebanese laboratory and the massacres of which Christians were victims in the 1980s constituted a first manifestation of this.
The institutionalization of Salafist Islam with Daesh, as well as the clearly hostile diplomacy of certain states such as President Erdoğan's Turkey, has further contributed to refocusing Eastern issues around the question of Islam.
It is obvious that this trend intersects with domestic political issues, with the rise of communitarianism in the suburbs and tensions around this subject within French public opinion.
as well as the clearly hostile diplomacy of certain states such as President Erdoğan's Turkey, has further contributed to refocusing Eastern issues around the question of Islam.
It is obvious that this trend intersects with domestic political issues, with the rise of communitarianism in the suburbs and tensions around this subject within French public opinion.
as well as the clearly hostile diplomacy of certain states such as President Erdoğan's Turkey, has further contributed to refocusing Eastern issues around the question of Islam.
It is obvious that this trend intersects with domestic political issues, with the rise of communitarianism in the suburbs and tensions around this subject within French public opinion.
As soon as he came to power, Emmanuel Macron sought to contradict his two predecessors who were thought to have broken with the Gaullist tradition.
Jean-Francois Figeac
Your work focuses in particular on the history of French public opinion in relation to the East, and your book partly covers this approach. How have the French perceived, throughout their history, this “complicated Orient”?
Awareness of Eastern geopolitical issues and their impact on European balances takes place over the long term.
What was called “the Eastern Question” in the 19th century was undeniably a turning point in this area.
It was at this time, in the context of the weakening of the Sublime Porte faced with the double pressure of competing European imperialisms and the movement of nationalities, that a large part of the intellectual elite (publicists, writers, historians, jurists) erected plans for the partition of the Ottoman Empire between the European powers.
After the fall and decomposition of this vast territory following the First World War, the vision that French society had of
Orient began to shrink to the French mandate in Syria and Lebanon, eventually Egypt, before scaling up again under De Gaulle in the early years of the Fifth Republic.
It was then that the Orient was thought of on the scale of the Arab world, going so far as to include the countries of the Persian Gulf during the last two decades.
What is the influence of culture, literature, the arts and a form of romanticism in this French feeling towards the Orient?
Orientalism, whether literary, pictorial or scholarly, has strongly contributed to shaping the representations of the French public on the Orient.
We can think in particular of the reception in the working classes of the tales of the
Thousand and One Nights
, translated into French from the beginning of the 18th century.
In the 19th century, the stories of travelers as renowned as Chateaubriand, Lamartine or Flaubert enabled the educated public to imagine more precisely the landscapes of the Ottoman Empire.
A romanticism thus developed, clearly visible in the paintings of Delacroix, Ingres and Chassériau.
Painting diffused a whole imagination, materialized by spaces like the harem and the seraglio.
We must add to this the curiosity of scholars, in particular through Egyptology, thanks to tutelary figures like Champollion.
All this has contributed to the idealization of this region of the world, including on the political level.
Thus, the dream of an Arab Kingdom allied with France was able to structure part of the collective unconscious until
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In the light of the history of France, how would you qualify the oriental policy of Emmanuel Macron? Is it part of a particular tradition, Gaullist for example? Other ?
As soon as he came to power, Emmanuel Macron sought to contradict his two predecessors who were thought to have broken with the Gaullist tradition.
It is certain that several inflections may have taken on a Gaullist accent, such as the desire to get closer to certain authoritarian political regimes, such as that of President Sissi in Egypt, with the aim of promoting the interests of France as a priority.
Nevertheless, the diplomacy of the President of the Republic remains a diplomacy of blows and opportunities, far from the global vision that de Gaulle and some of his heirs had of the Middle East: there is no longer really an Arab policy of the leader of State.
Emmanuel Macron's contribution is to have understood that
it was necessary to deal with the problems of this region with a multilateral method, taking into account all the actors, state and civilian.
But this approach is nothing other than that of a secondary power which is no longer able to have an independent influence from that of its rivals.
More fundamentally, the Quai d'Orsay does not seem to reflect on the new theoretical framework in which French diplomacy must be placed after the ideal of the Arab Kingdom in the 19th century and that of Arab politics in the 20th century.
Consequently, French policy in the Orient is becoming more and more like that of a merchant whose sole objective is to sell planes.
other than that of a secondary power which is no longer in a position to have an influence independent of that of its rivals.
More fundamentally, the Quai d'Orsay does not seem to reflect on the new theoretical framework in which French diplomacy must be placed after the ideal of the Arab Kingdom in the 19th century and that of Arab politics in the 20th century.
Consequently, French policy in the Orient is becoming more and more like that of a merchant whose sole objective is to sell planes.
other than that of a secondary power which is no longer in a position to have an influence independent of that of its rivals.
More fundamentally, the Quai d'Orsay does not seem to reflect on the new theoretical framework in which French diplomacy must be placed after the ideal of the Arab Kingdom in the 19th century and that of Arab politics in the 20th century.
Consequently, French policy in the Orient is becoming more and more like that of a merchant whose sole objective is to sell planes.
ideal of the Arab Kingdom in the 19th century and that of Arab politics in the 20th century.
Consequently, French policy in the Orient is becoming more and more like that of a merchant whose sole objective is to sell planes.
ideal of the Arab Kingdom in the 19th century and that of Arab politics in the 20th century.
Consequently, French policy in the Orient is becoming more and more like that of a merchant whose sole objective is to sell planes.
"France and the Orient", Jean-François Figeac Past Composed