National History in France: From Debate to Cultural Battle

Abstract

Since the end of the nineteenth century and the de fi nitive establishment of a republican regime in France, the school institution has been invested with a major civic role: educat-ing all young people to become French citizens. This education of the nation has placed a considerable signi fi cance to the transmission of national history, which is taught with the same programmes in all French schools from the age of seven. The history taught of the nation was fi rst of all a patriotic history until the 1960s: France must be loved by learning about its glorious events and heroes because the historical destiny of this nation for centuries has been to accomplish universal human progress. This article explains how the transmission of history became the object of debate from the end of the 1970s in the context of a new social relationship with the past. It then traces the emergence of a new moral imperative that is imposed by the mantra “ a duty to remember, ” based on the recognition of crimes and the reparations due to victims. The last part of the paper explores the “ patriotic turn ” in French memory politics in the late 2000s and its socio-pol-itical consequences.