France In The 19th Century

France in the nineteenth century hit on some of the darker parts of modernity on its journey to the France of today. There were many events and attitudes that a good portion of French men and women would like to forget. Many governmental officials, historians, and citizens of that time period repressed or consciously used policies and writings to perpetuate a myth that allowed for these same events and attitudes to fall by the wayside. In recent years, revisionist historians, or historians who look at the memories of past events and try to reconcile them with actual evidence, have debunked the myths of nineteenth-century France and allowed for the French to see themselves, a product of the misremembered horrors and craziness of the nineteenth …show more content…
This collective covering up of the bad helped by myth makers of all kinds hid France’s true nature from its inhabitants. The first thing that French people wanted to forget was that they lost the Second World War and were occupied by Nazi Germany. Marc Bloch, a historian who worked on the front during the retreat as an oil distributor and who eventually became a prominent member for the Resistance movement wrote in his book about the retreat, Strange Defeat, the reason for the defeat of France. He writes, “Whatever deep seated causes of the disaster may have been, the immediate occasion…was the utter incompetence of the High Command.” France did not want to face its incompetence, especially not the incompetence of its elite officer corps. The second event France made an effort to forget was the Vichy government’s collaboration during the occupation with the Germans. Everyone in the world knew that the Nazi party was full of raging anti-Semites, what many didn’t know was that there were many anti-Semitics in the French camp as well. France made a considerable effort after the war was over to make sure they seemed like the victimized party. Many “traditional representations [of France during the occupation] had literally obliterated the existence of a French antisemitism that was encouraged by official policies, with …show more content…
For French men and women, especially those who read history books, modernity means looking critically at their entire past and recognizing where myth, counter-myth, and the elusive truth collide and forming their own view of the history of their country and not just trusting what they read in elementary school. Learning about the dark side of modernity can be a painful road, one until now not many had traveled down, but for France to come to terms with its past is one of the only ways it can be better prepared for its