The sky is threatening this Tuesday above the Palais de la Porte Dorée, very close to the Bois de Vincennes. It is heavy and the rain is likely to fall at any time. Nevertheless, a few days after its reopening, visitors are very present, on the steps of the National Museum of the History of Immigration. Two friends are waiting for the time of their reservation. “It’s at 3:30 p.m.,” they specify. Only a few more minutes to wait to discover the museum they never got to visit. “We went there once, but it was closed.”
However, this visit is important for the two friends. “We are also concerned by this history of immigration, so we wanted to know more and also discover specific elements about our culture of origin”. This is precisely one of the issues that the museum wishes to address as a priority for its reopening: one in three French people is of immigrant origin, according to the latest INSEE data. All concerned… And yet the reopening of the museum after three years of work will have been done in pain rather than in joy. It is not for lack of having completely redesigned and reworked the entire route. Through the 1,800 m2 dedicated, the visitor is now better accompanied thanks to a more detailed and less vague chronology than before.
“The king as a symbol of France”
Everything was rather well thought out, except surely one detail: the communication made around the reopening of the museum. In the corridors of the Paris metro, it was difficult to miss. On the quays, a black and white poster depicts King Louis XIV with the following inscription: “It’s crazy all these foreigners who have made the history of France”. With a small additional precision: “Spanish mother, Austrian grandmother”. And very quickly, the poster made jazz on social networks, especially with the right and the far right. “Multiculturalist delirium in the Anglo-Saxon fashion”, “Even Vichy would not have considered him a” foreigner “”, castigates in particular the president of the Sovereign Republic movement Georges Kuzmanovic on his Twitter account.
We must give back to the king what belongs to the king, Louis XIV was indeed considered French. Born in 1638 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the future Sun King was never considered a foreigner. “At that time, we saw the king above all as the symbol of France and what it was like to be French”, underlines the historian Philip Mansel and author of Louis XIV: King of the Worldpublished by Passés Composites.
“The most French in France”
“At the time of his birth in 1638, there was an outpouring of praise. France was saved, France had a given god, ”describes Philip Mansel, adding that people quickly erased the Spanish origins of his mother. “Anne d’Autrice was quite popular in Paris. When she was regent, we forgot a little that she was a foreigner. For their part, the Bourbons believed that they were the most French in France”.
Philip Mansel especially compares this label of “foreigner” to other characters of the same period who were more perceived as such. Cardinal Mazarin for example. Coming from Italy, he even kept an attachment to his country of origin which he claimed and assumed, in particular through his accent. “He was also hated for his corruption and his so-called tyranny,” adds Philipe Mansel.
A still vague concept
However, the use of the term “foreigner” has evolved throughout history and this is what makes it so complex. “At that time, a foreigner could also come from another province. Nationality was quite flexible, quite vague, but there was a very strong sense of what the Nations of Europe were like, even before the French Revolution. A Spaniard was not a Frenchman,” emphasizes Philip Mansel. For the historian, the term foreign depends above all on the definition one wishes to give it. “As ‘courtier’. It can mean anything and everything.”
Clumsily, however, it is the evolution of this term that the Palais de la Porte Dorée wanted to highlight, which did not wish to respond to our requests. The permanent exhibition chooses to “make an archeology of the present time, going back over the centuries”. A present time – it must be said – jostled by the news when on June 14, a migrant ship sank off the coast of Greece, killing at least 78 people. But also as the political agenda reconsiders the management of immigration, with the future law presented by the government.
The challenge of pedagogy
At the National Museum of the History of Immigration, the term “foreigner” is above all presented as a guiding thread. It begins under the Old Regime, where the museum recalls that despite the restrictions imposed, “France is a great land of immigration”. There are also foreigners under the French Revolution and the establishment of “political citizenship” with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August 1789, but where foreigners “remain excluded from the vote”. Finally under the July Monarchy, the panel recalls the “important turning point” of the period and the arrival of thousands of European political exiles. Jump in time and a new wing of the exhibition is dedicated to the current period, “between hospitality and firmness”.
What matters here is above all the pedagogy. In the corridors of the museum, groups of college students in the company of their teachers come and go. Matthieu, a history and geography teacher, accompanies his students, a 4th grade class. For him, it was important to come back to present the new museum to them. “As part of the course on colonization, the exhibition is interesting to better illustrate the theory thanks to the images and contents that the museum reserves”, he rejoices.