Building the History Museum to Stop History: Nicolas Sarkozy’s New Presidential Museum of French History

Abstract

When he ran for president in 2007 Nicolas Sarkozy promised to build a museum of French history. He declared that he was troubled by the lack of a coherent account of the nation’s great moments and great heroes. On being elected, he started the planning process, finally settling on the Hôtel de Soubise, part of the Archives nationales, as the site of the future Maison de l’histoire de France. Although his project was supported by a certain number of intellectuals, many university scholars, especially the historians, raised strong objections to a concept that returned to the old Third Republic civic history in the style of Ernest Lavisse. The future museum was to offer visitors old-fashioned narrative history of male achievements, with no account taken of new insights that women’s, gender, social, cultural, colonial and immigration history have added to any discussion of what France is or might be. It rejects the idea that there have been, and can be, many ways of being French. The critics of the museum project deplored the instrumentalisation of the nation’s past – one of several such presidential ventures – for short-term political gain. The strike of archive employees, which lasted for several months, scuttled that site as the future home of the history museum. The story is not finished. The discussion of the presidential museum initiative is placed in a larger context in which increased economic neo-liberalism, greater state interventions at home and overseas, and the propagation of a nostalgic-conservative vision of the nation’s past reinforce each other, even as they coexist in uneasy union.

‘Tous ceux sans qui la France ne serait pas la France’: The case for a French national museum of colonial histories

“…Although Nicolas Sarkozy would ultimately not immortalise his legacy in brick, mortar, glass and historical relics, it was certainly not for lack of trying. As one of his 2007 campaign promises and unsuccessful 2012 re-election strategies, he vowed to construct France’s first national museum of French history: La Maison de l’Histoire de France would tell the ‘glorious’ parts of French history, enshrining ‘the nation’s great moments and great heroes’ (Bancel and Lebovics, 2011: 271):The future museum was to offer visitors old-fashioned narrative history of male achievements, with no account taken of new insights that women’s, gender, social, cultural, colonial and immigration history have added to any discussion of what France is or might be. It rejects the idea that there have been, and can be, many ways of being French.…”

The future of the nation foretold in its museums

“…foolish ideology (Bancel and Lebovics, 2011). No one has just one identity; we are who we are in ever-changing contexts.…”

“…This journal, whose splendid 25 years of publication we celebrated in June 2013 in Marseilles, published the article that Nicolas Bancel and I wrote about the planning history of this institution (Bancel and Lebovics, 2011). He saw the Maison de l'Histoire de France as his presidential museum in the same way as the Pompidou Museum and the Quai Branly were created by his predecessors.…”

Le regard de l’étranger: What French cultural studies brings to French cultural history

“…The early issues carried several articles on the institutions and on the ministers (André Malraux, Jack Lang) taking forward national policy in the cultural field. The scholarly analysis of cultural policy has been less stimulated by recent government activity, and the only article in the recent period was a critical discussion of President Sarkozy's proposal to establish a Museum of French History (Bancel and Lebovics, 2011). Interest in broader cultural policy was well served by the regular rubric (Notice Board) that was published until 2012, reporting news from the Ministry of Culture alongside events of potential interest to readers.…”