It will run through the beginning of the Capetian dynasty to nowadays and will focus on everything related to France and its history.
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La Gueuse - Yvonneck
Les Camelots du roi used to be the action force of the far right league l’Action Française and created an important repertoire of songs, such as La Gueuse (their nickname for the 3rd Republic)
The song curses the upholders of democracy such as Jews (“youpins” being a pejorative term), free-massons, foreigners. The deputies Jaurès or Briand… are promised the same end as the Republic. After killing the hated Republic, the Camelots are invited to restore the monarchy.
Le traître : Dégradation d’Alfred Dreyfus, dégradation dans la Cour Morlan de l’École militaire à Paris.
In 1894, the French Army’s counter-intelligence section, led by Lt. Col. Jean Conrad Sandherr, became aware that new artillery information was being passed to the German embassy in Paris by a highly placed spy likely to be posted in the French General Staff. Suspicion quickly fell upon Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was arrested for treason on 15 October 1894. On 5 January 1895, Dreyfus was summarily convicted in a secret court martial, publicly stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment in a penal colony on Devil’s Island in French Guiana.
L’arrivée de Harkis à Ongles le 6 septembre 1962, © Collection Hélène Durand
Harki (adjective from the Arabic harka, standard Arabic haraka حركة, “war party” or “movement”, i.e., a group of volunteers, especially soldiers) is the generic term for Muslim Algerians loyalists who served as auxiliaries in the French Army during the Algerian War from 1954 to 1962. The phrase sometimes extends to cover all Algerian Muslims who supported the French presence in Algeria during this war. In France, the term is used to designate the Franco-musulmans rapatriés (“repatriated French Muslims”) community living in the country since 1962, and its metropolitan born descendants.
In 1962, orders were initially given by the French government of Charles de Gaulle to officials and army officers to prevent the Harkis from following the example of the Pieds-Noirs and seeking refuge in Metropolitan France. About 91,000 Harkis (including family members) were able to find refuge in France. As feared, there were widespread reprisals against those who remained in Algeria. The French government of the time, concerned mainly with disengagement from Algeria and the repatriation of the Pieds-Noirs, disregarded or downplayed news of these killings. Nothing had been planned for the Harkis, and the government refused to formally recognize their right to stay in France for some years. They were kept out of sight in “temporary” internment camps surrounded by barbed wire, such as the Joffre Camp in Rivesaltes (outside of Perpignan) and in “chantiers de forestage”—communities of 30 Harki families on the outskirts of forests that the men maintained
1941 Le Juif et la France
Le Juif et la France (Jew and France) was a racist and antisemit exhibition held between the 5th of September 1941 and the 15th of January 1942 by the Institut d’études des questions juives (the Jewish questions study institute). It was meant to be “scientifical”, and was based on the book of an anthropology teacher of Paris : “How to recognise a Jew”
The exhibition was about the supposed corruption of the society by the Jews in key sectors (corruption of the army, the economy, the traditions…).
Around 200 000 persons visited the exhibition.
Chocolat danse dans le “Irish and American Bar”, 1896
Orphan, Rafal Padilla, born in Cuba in 1868, was sold to serve a rich Portuguese and brought to Europe. After escaping to Spain, he was discovered by the clown Tony Grice in Bilbao, who made him his partner. Padilla gained the nickname of ‘Chocolat’.
He then teamed up with the clown Footit in 1886, in Paris, where they became famous with their show, with Footit as an authoritarian clown who would correct Chocolat for his mistakes. It seems that the French expression “Je suis chocolat” (I’m chocolate”) meaning “I’m fooled” comes from his character.
His success was at its highest in 1905, when they produced at the Folies Bergères. But in 1910 the team split up, and Padilla didn’t manage to find a job as an actor, despite his qualities. He died in poverty in 1917.
Scène de la vie quotidienne dans un village d’Afrique centrale.
André HERVIAULT
© Photo RMN - J.-G. Berizzi - Droits réservés
The Paris Colonial Exhibition (or “Exposition coloniale internationale”, International Colonial Exhibition) was a six-month colonial exhibition held in Paris, France in 1931 that attempted to display the diverse cultures and immense resources of France’s colonial possessions.
The Togo and Cameroun section of the exhibition included the reproduction of a chief’s hut and two pavilions displaying arts and artefacts about tourism, hunting, teaching and the French social policies in these colonies. In this painting, exhibited on one of the pavilion, Herviault represented the ‘primitive’ life of the autochtones, busy with traditionnal activities. He approached the scene with an ethnographical point of view, which differed from the basic colonial propaganda : he was interested in depicting the cultural aspects of the local culture, and not so much in promoting the ressources or the luxury of the land. But he still subscribed to the colonialist theories of France bringing civilisation to its colonies.
De Andreis 1915Inv. 16269
© DR
During a visit near Lake Managua, Nicaragua, in 1909, the journalist Pierre Lardet discovered the recipe for a cocoa-based drink. When he returned to Paris, he started its commercial fabrication and, in 1912, began marketing Banania with the picture of an Antillaise. Her image was replaced in 1915 with the drawing of a widely smiling Senegalese man.
At the outset of World War I, the popularity of the colonial troops at the time led to the replacement of the West Indian by the now more familiar jolly Senegalese infantry man enjoying Banania. Pierre Lardet took it upon himself to distribute the product to the Army, using the line pour nos soldats la nourriture abondante qui se conserve sous le moindre volume possible (“for our soldiers: the abundant food which keeps, using the least possible space”).
The brand’s yellow background underlines the banana ingredient, and the Senagalese infantryman’s red and blue uniform make up the other two main colours. The slogan Y’a bon (“It’s good”) derives from the pidgin French supposedly used by these soldiers (it is, in fact, an invention). Slowly but surely, the slogan and the character became inseparable as the expression was coined: l’ami y’a bon (“the y’a bon buddy”).
The form of the character has since evolved, so that now all that remains is the name. However, the original advertising has become a cultural icon in France. Posters and reproduction tin-plate signs of the pre-war advertising continue to be sold.
Portrait of the Wandering JewDonated by M. and Mme Harburger
18th century
End-grained wood, hand coloured on laid paper
44 x 30,2 cm
Photo Nicolas Feuillie © Musée d’art et d’histoire du judaisme
mahj 91.4.1
The Christian legend of the Wandering Jew was a widespread iconographic and literary theme in European countries up until the twentieth century. This figure of the Jew, generally called Ahasver, who, having refused to help Jesus on the Way of the Cross, is condemned to wander for ever, inspired a mixture of horror and compassion.
Late eighteenth century folk-art images and French and Rhenish carved figurines display clear differences to the anti-Jewish caricatures of the mid-nineteenth century. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the images of the Wandering Jew usually showed a “venerable old man” with the features of a gentle pilgrim wanderer.
The popularity of Épinal imagery, from the late eighteenth century, marked the transition from Christian anti-Judaism to anti-Semitism: now the Jew was portrayed with a hooked nose and often repugnant garb. The Jews were viewed as outsiders until the Revolution, and anti-Semitic phobia did not take hold until the integration of the Jews into the nation. Then they were portrayed with the characteristics that became the classic attributes of the Jew in anti-Semitic illustrations, from the Dreyfus Affair to the exhibition at the Grand Rex under the Vichy government.
Recueils de reglemens, edits, declarations et arrets : concernant le commerce, l’administration de la justice et la police des colonies françaises de l’Amérique… ; (Avec le) Code noir….
The Code noir was a decree originally passed by France’s King Louis XIV in 1685. The Code Noir defined the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire, restricted the activities of free Negroes, forbade the exercise of any religion other than Roman Catholicism (it included a provision that all slaves must be baptized and instructed in the Roman Catholic religion), and ordered all Jews out of France’s colonies. The Code Noir also gave plantation owners extreme disciplinary power over their slaves, including legitimizing corporal punishment as a method of maintaining control.
