HANDS OFF HISTORY, IF YOU PLEASE
Jean-Noel Jeanneney
The Age, Australia
April 29 2008
Politics and academic freedom, especially in the practice of
historiography, do not mix.
I ONLY know about your "history wars" from the outside, and you won’t
be surprised if I use the example of the historians of Germany and
their grappling with the issue of the collective responsibility of an
entire people in the flowering of Nazism and its criminal barbarities.
But I’ll also point to a situation that is closer to yours, namely
the controversies in the US and Canada that for several decades now
have sprung up around the intervention of historians in the legal
confrontations over the rights claimed by the descendants of the
Indians who signed particular treaties with their conquerors. In
their eyes, these treaties confer special rights that fall outside
the common regulations — hunting and fishing rights, for example.
In North America things are further complicated, in civic and moral
terms, because many of our colleagues have accepted to be paid by
one side or the other to defend their respective theses. I remember
rejecting a few years ago an offer made by lawyers for cigarette
manufacturers in anticipation of future trials. They were asking me
to certify, from documents that they would give me, that in the 1950s
smokers were already perfectly aware of the risks they were running and
that consequently no responsibility could be imputed to the companies
concerned. You can see how slippery the ground is, from the point of
view both of the ethics of the profession and of the public interest.
Along this line, and more broadly, it is illuminating to consider
those special moments that constitute commemorations — when a nation
crystallises chronological chance to reflect on itself, and, in the
best of cases, to cast light on the deep forces that have slowly
created a state of "wanting to live together".
In France, there have recently been sharp reactions to a law voted
by the right-wing majority in the context of a much-needed and
belated renewal of the historiography of French colonisation. This
law imposed on the teachers in our junior and senior high schools
the obligation to teach — and I quote — the "positive aspects" of
colonisation. Many of us responded that it was certainly not through
a law that historians could be forced to have a balanced approach and
that this text, therefore, was nothing more than a party-political
injunction. I must say that when I saw that your former prime minister,
John Howard, had sought in 1999 to introduce
into the preamble of your constitution the statement that "Australians
are free to be proud of their country and heritage",
I had a reaction bordering on the incredulous.
In France, a great controversy has developed around what we call
"memorial laws" — laws that seek to shape the national memory. Whether
they are passed by the Right or the Left, they claim to tell the
truth about historical facts in the name and interest of the French
nation. One of them has recognised the Armenian genocide, another has
defined as a crime against humanity slavery and black slave trading
(the Western practice, rather than the Arab practice).
The critique of the historians has, moreover, reached back as far as
a 1990 law, the so-called Gayssot Law, which punished negationism, the
negation of the gas chambers under the Nazis. Against these "memorial"
laws, we created an association called "Liberty for History", under
the presidency of the great Rene Remond, who was my master. After
his death, Pierre Nora became president. Neither of these men can be
accused of being carried away by excessive emotion.
Our conviction is that it is not the place of lawmakers to regulate the
work of history in this way. You should not see this as self-protection
by the profession. One does not need a university label to write
good history. Negationism is ignominious. But if it has faded, it is
because of the work of courageous colleagues, not because of laws and,
moreover, before that law, we had plenty of legal means of punishing
anti-Semitism. For us, it is absolutely unacceptable from a civic
point of view, that successive and possibly contradictory parliamentary
majorities should make determinations about the interpretation of the
past, relying on some transient and chance notion of the national
interest. It is not only an offence to that intellectual freedom
that the Republic must guarantee, it is also a peril to the dignity
of a democracy in relation to its past. Patriotism, in truth, while
a precious value, should take up its abode elsewhere.
By way of conclusion, I would like to give the final word to another
great historian, Gabriel Monod, who founded the Revue historique
in 1876. Monod was a strict Protestant, and as such was more than
most preoccupied with the ethical and civic foundations of his
discipline. In an article on the progress of the science of history
since the 16th century, he set about formulating a synthesis of the
different duties I have outlined : "Without proposing any goal, any
purpose other than the benefit to truth, history, in a mysterious
and sure way, works towards the greatness of the nation and at the
same time towards the progress of humanity."
No doubt, like him and like me, a century and a half later, you can
feel how difficult the reconciliation of these two objectives will
always be.
But in the end, it is perhaps that challenging task that gives our
profession its savour, its scope, and, in the best of cases, when we
succeed in fulfilling it, its virtue.
Professor Jean-Noel Jeanneney is a historian at the Political Sciences
Institute in Paris, and was the French government’s secretary of
state for overseas commerce, and later communication, between 1991
and 1993. This is an excerpt from a speech he gave last night at the
University of Melbourne.