A few weeks later, a ‘second’ FLB attempts to take legal action. Unlike the first, it advocates extreme-Leftist opinions, but still relies on the Skoazell Vreizh (‘Breton Rescue’), whose treasurer, Mr Raymond Jégaden, is a former member of Bezen Perrot. In November 1969, a meeting held at the Mutualité gathers various figures ranging from Abbé Aimé Lebreton, the rector of Gommenec’h, to Reverend Father Cardonnel, through the likes of Doctor Guy Caro and Mr Jean-Pierre Vigier. The Internationale is sung there more often than the Breton anthem. This entire undertaking would, however, not be followed up on (although its inspirers would later resurface in Bretagne révolutionnaire and the CABs).
In 1971, it is a third FLB, one that is prone to ‘spontaneity’, that carries out its own series of attacks. Soon enough, it ends up being dismantled. In December 1972, eleven Bretons are tried in Paris. The debate is rekindled.
The end of 1973 marks yet another FLB rebirth. The latter, however, splinters into two branches corresponding to two distinct tendencies — on the one hand, the FLB-ARB (Breton Republican Army), which takes its orders from Ireland and is said to have rather close ties to the Strollad ar Vro (SAV); and on the other, the FLB-LNS (For National Liberation and Socialism), which declares its support for a ‘national bloc managed by the Breton working class, from which none but the Breton bourgeois oligarchy would be excluded’. The leaders of the FLB-LNS are then rumoured to be in touch with the ‘hardliners’ of the Basque ETA movement. One of them, however, Mr Serge Liégeard, would be denounced as a ‘spy’.
On 20th October, 1975, Mr Yann Fouéré, the former head of L’Avenir de la Bretagne, is arrested in Saint-Brieuc. Twelve other Breton militants are brought before the State Security Court. Mr Fouéré, who is accused of being one of the FLB-ARB’s inspirers but against whom not a single shred of evidence can be brought forth, would be detained for several months. A remarkable fact: the (leftist) FASAB refuses to intervene in his defence, highlighting the fact that it has ‘nothing in common with him politically speaking’. In an effort to secure his release, however, a committee would be launched by Mr Jean-Jacques Mourreau (Hans Zorn of the Alsatian Autonomist Movement) and, during the month of December, his case would be mentioned to the European Parliament by English socialist MP Mr Tom Ellis. He would eventually be released.
Having compromised its position in relation to the ‘pro-self-governance’ Breton Left, the FLB-LNS seems to have vanished today. Only the FLB-ARB subsists, along with it ‘external Irish lungs’.
On 29th September, 1976, a twenty-two-year-old Breton, Yann-Mikaël Kernaléguen, is killed by the blast of an explosive charge that he himself had planted in Ti-Vougeret (Dinéault), but which chose to collect upon realising that the targeted premises were home to a family.
The Emsav’s Change of Essence
All in all, the 1968–1976 period was therefore characterised by a complete atomisation of political organisations, yet also by ever intensifying cultural renewal.
As for Mr Olier Mordrel, who benefited from the statute of limitations in 1968, he returned shortly afterwards from Argentina, passing through Spain on the way. His exile had lasted twenty-two years, a period during which he had regularly expressed himself through the notebooks of La Bretagne réelle-Keltia,665 a newsletter published in Merdrignac since 1953 by Mr Jacques Quatre-Boeufs (Jacques Gallo) and intended to serve as an opinion column for all tendencies encountered in the Emsav.
Olier Mordrel is now seventy-six years old, yet he has not aged for half a century. Tall, well-built, with a razor-sharp voice and thin lips, he still decides, settles and arguments like a twenty-year-old dialectician. He speaks seven languages — but most of all Breton. The publication of his book entitled Breiz Atao caused quite a stir in the Emsav, and the local authorities have been a source of trouble to him as well. This is what he writes today:
The Emsav’s spiritual and intellectual tradition has been broken. Not only has the former been adapted to suit current tastes (which has always been the case), but it has undergone a change of essence, which is an infinitely graver development.
And yet ‘it is enough for one to open a newspaper published in Brest or Rennes on any day of the year to discover that, far from being moribund, Brittany seethes with youths eager to break their fetters and experience their own truth’. Hence this reminder:
Following the crushing of the Dublin revolt in 1916, the crowd insulted the prisoners dragged by the English through the streets and spat in their faces (we ourselves experienced this in 1944). Twenty years later, however, the main railway station in Dublin had been named after their leader, Patrick Pearse. And it took thirty years for the Irish government to repatriate with pomp and circumstance the ashes of Roger Casement, the “traitor” who, in 1915, did the very same thing in Berlin that two Breton men would do there in 1940 and was later hanged in London.
More forthright than ever, Olier Mordrel proclaims:
A genuinely national Breton party can only exist outside the leftist spectrum, as well as outside any Right which, regardless of its French or Breton character, only offers us development.
He adds:
If Breiz Atao were reborn, it would be entirely different from anything it has ever been. The Breton question must be rethought, and Breton nationalism must undergo a genuine and “heart-rending” revision.
And here is his conclusion:
Breiz Atao has been anything but a minority-based nationalism moulded in harmony with the nineteenth century. In a land caught in the throes of death, it has acted as an inexhaustible and unfaltering source of life whose birth and emergence one must familiarise themselves with if one is to have a clear idea of what is happening and will occur in Brittany. It does indeed happen that the very old returns with the intensity of the very new, displaying a strength whose secret is unknown to anyone else.
*
Breiz Atao. Histoire et actualité du nationalisme Breton,666 an essay by Olier Mordrel. Alain Moreau, 557 pages.
La voie bretonne. Radiographie de l’emsav,667 an essay by Olier Mordrel. Nature et Bretagne, Quimper, 235 pages.
Le mouvement Breton,668 1919–1945, an essay by Alain Deniel. Maspéro, 450 pages.
Plus de pardons pour les Bretons,669 a narrative by Saint-Loup. Presses de la Cité, 574 pages.
Le révolution bretonne permanente,670 an essay by Ronan Caerléon. Table ronde, 346 pages.
Les Bretons le dos au mur,671 an essay by Ronan Caerléon. Table ronde, 218 pages.
Au village des condamnés à mort, an essay by Ronan Caerléon. Table ronde, 380 pages.
Le rêve fou des soldats de Breiz Atao,672 an essay by Ronan Caerléon. Nature et Bretagne (38 Jeanne d’Arc street, 29000 Quimper, France), 235 pages.
Fransez Debauvais de “Breiz Atao” et les siens,673 an essay by Anna Youenou (2 volumes). Self-published, 412 and 431 pages respectively (with a third volume expected to come out some time in 1977).
La Bretagne dans la guerre,674 an essay by Hervé Le Boterf (3 volumes). France-Empire, 335, 332 and 763 pages respectively.
La question bretonne,675 an essay by Renaud Dulong. Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, (27 Saint-Guillaume street, 75341 Paris cedex 07), 207 pages.
La langue bretonne face à ses oppresseurs,676 an essay by Jorg Gwegen. Nature et Bretagne, Quimper, 313 pages.
Bretagne: re-naissance d’un people,677 an essay by Jean-Pierre Le Dantec. Gallimard, 314 pages.
***
At the end of 1976, the Liaison Centre for the Study of Breton Interests (CELIB) undertook to publish a monthly letter whose aim is to ‘comment on regional, national or European events’ (22 Hoche street, 35000 Rennes, France).
‘La Nation bretonne’, P.O. Box 26, 56200 La Gacilly, France; ‘Breizh Yaouank’, P.O. Box 2, 44590 Derval, France’; ‘Douar Breizh’, 9 du Port street, 22530 Mur-de-Bretagne, France; ‘La Bretagne réelle-Keltia’, 44 Philippe-Lemercier Street, 22230 Merdrignac, France.
*
The
Colonial Notion in France
When making the decision to take control of Algiers, the government of Charles the Tenth had no intention whatsoever to undertake the conquest of a vast North African empire: it was only a matter of conducting a small-scale operation whose basic purpose was to boost the monarchy’s prestige.
Paradoxically, explains Mr Girardet, the first adversaries of ‘colonisation’ were the masters of liberal thought, namely Adam Smith in the United States, Cobden in England, and Jean-Baptiste Say in France.
Their reasoning was simple: the fact of having colonies is only advantageous to a small minority of individuals — soldiers, officials, and certain traders. On the other hand, it imposes considerable military and administrative burdens upon the metropolis’ budget; due to the resulting heavy taxation, it represents an obstacle to the general development of industrial and commercial activity.
A professor of contemporary history at the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris, Mr Raoul Girardet had previously published books dealing with the political Right (Le nationalisme français, 1871–1914.678 Armand Colin, 1966) and the army (La crise militaire française, 1945–1962.679 Armand Colin, 1964). At the start of the 1960s, he was part of the Esprit Public680 team. His study of the Colonial Notion in France from 1871 to 1962 constitutes a novel and remarkable contribution to the history of French national sentiment. It is a depiction of a mentality, an idea-based novel. What one discovers in it is that colonial expansion was not due to the presence of a specific party but was rather the result of an era.
Indeed, Mr Girardet remarks, observation leads one ‘to relativise or, should I say, almost de-sacralise the obsessive Right-Left opposition within which an entire school gradually acquired an ever-pronounced tendency to restrict the moral history of contemporary France’.
Scholars and Missionaries
In 1871, when the smoke of the Commune had already dissipated, France’s overseas possessions represented a total of one million square kilometres, scattered across four continents and inhabited by some five million people.
With regard to these possessions, the public opinion had thus far been indifferent. French sovereignty had, incidentally, only affirmed itself as a result of random circumstance. There was no colonial intent, nor was there any colonising settlement. There were barely 200,000 Europeans in Algeria, half of whom were not even French:
Just like the 20,000 Parisian workers deported by the Second Republic, many of those settlers had been primitively recruited among elements that were deemed asocial — the unemployed, the rebellious, and the rootless suburbanites for whom that era’s conformism had no tendency to manifest sympathy.
It takes minds a few years to evolve. Three rarely associated currents combine to give rise to what would (wrongly) be termed imperialism: the highly scientistic ideal of a new humanity that remains ever open to progress; missionary renewal; and people’s bitterness in the face of an amputated national territory, combined with a desire to reinstate a larger and stronger France.
‘Scientism’ puts a new spin on the optimism inherited from the Enlightenment. Both geographers — who are often rationalistic — and ‘explorers’ rush to the forefront of the ‘discoverer’ wave. Clergymen are, however, not to be outdone. While scientists depart to combat ‘superstitions’, evangelisers uproot foreign beliefs so as to impose the Christian faith everywhere.
France sets the example: twenty-two missionary congregations see the light of day between 1816 and 1870. This leads to martyrdom in both Black Africa and Tonkin, as elderly ladies collect stamps and La Semeuse681 coupons to ‘redeem the little Chinese’.
Monsignor Miché, the vicar apostolic of Saigon, writes:
For a long time, rebels managed to curb the conversion growth. Now that the French authorities have finally exacted a cruel revenge against the rebellious, peace is gradually re-establishing its presence; and as confidence re-emerges, so does our religious movement.
In 1802, Monsignor Guillaume Mauviel, the bishop of Saint-Domingue, addressed the inhabitants of the eastern part of the island, which had recently become a French colony. This was his message:
Do not doubt, my very dear brothers, that it is the Lord that has enabled your transition from the domination of your former suzerain to the guardian empire of the laws of the French Republic.
To which he then added:
Be wary of the fact that Christians must never ponder how or why a country passes from one government to another, unless their sole purpose is to acknowledge in these changes the eternally present hand and will of God.
And here is what the bishop of Évreux declared in the spring of 1830, when Charles X launched the Algiers expedition:
It is not a matter of spilling Christian blood, but a question of repressing the insolence of a barbaric nation, the enemy of all that is Christian. It is to the audacity and rapacity of a nation of pirates that we must now put a stop. (As quoted by Pierre-Marie Dioudonnat682 in Les ivresses de l’Eglise de France,683 Sagittaire, 1976.)
Following the collapse of the Second Empire, France finds itself robbed of both Alsace and Lorraine. ‘One must not forget’, however, ‘that France’s borders are not limited to the Vosges’, Gabriel Charmes684 reminds us. In 1871, Monsignor Lavigerie invites the refugees of Alsace-Lorraine to travel to Algeria and discover ‘French Africa’.
Jules Ferry justifies the colonisation by contradicting the traditional liberal doctrine and says:
The colonial policy is the very daughter of the industrial one. In the eyes of wealthy states, where capital abounds and rapidly accumulates and the manufacturing system is in a state of continuous growth, exports represent an essential factor of public prosperity; and just like labour demand, the capital’s employment field is measured in relation to the very size of the foreign market.
Leftist Colonialism
In 1874, a historic book entitled De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes685 is published. Its author, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, affirms:
The nation that colonises most is the most supreme one. And if this is not the case today, it shall be so tomorrow.
He then adds:
The establishment of colonies is the best business in which the capital of a rich and ancient country can be employed.
The Left approves with a vengeance. In the Chamber, the ‘progressivists’ and ‘Leftist republicans’ represent the majority of those who adhere to the ‘colonial parliamentary group’ founded by ‘pied-noir’686 Eugène Etienne, a group which, in 1902, comprised 200 elected representatives.
The socialists are not to be outdone either. So as to praise ‘France’s civilising role’, Fourier, Enfantin and Cabet use the very same words as Francis Garnier, the man who conquered Tonkin. In the Temps modernes687 issue dedicated to National Minorities (number 324–26, August–September 1973), Mr Yves Person688 reminds his readers that Karl Marx himself had rejoiced at Algeria’s annexation.
By contrast, the Right displays greater reticence and is very loath to undertake such ‘distant adventures’. It also feels concerned to see ‘the best of its sons’ set off towards ‘the lands of the tropical sun’. In 1920, Maurras emphasises the fact that instead of following the path of conquest, France had better ‘devote its strength to the struggle against German hegemony in Europe’. On his part, Barrès would write in 1911:
Gambetta has embraced anticlericalism and colonialism so as to divert our army’s elite from the Rhine region.
A pink stain spreads across geographical atlases — the French Empire. It compensates for the ‘lost departments’, which are all marked in black. Senegalese riflemen, however, cannot replace good-natured Alsatian women. Déroulède689 shouts:
I have lost two sisters, and what you are offering me are twenty servants!
Incidentally, within the French Hexagon, ethnic cultures and regional languages also fall prey to that same republican and universalistic ardour.
In parallel, however, a more original kind of criticis
m develops. In 1899, Léopold de Saussure publishes a book entitled Psychologie de la colonisation française.690 In it, he criticises our ‘erring colonial ways’.
Adopting and developing some of Gustave Le Bon’s ideas on the hereditary aspect of mental characteristics, he bases his view on the principle which states that since man’s nature is neither identical on a spatial nor on a temporal level, in no way could human societies be equated to one another. Account taken of the fact that the elements of a civilisation are “intimately linked to a certain stable and hereditary mental constitution”, the institutions, cultures and languages of European peoples could never be imposed on others without causing severe damage to both the colonisers and the colonised. If worse comes to worst, assimilation may even occur in the opposite direction to the one officially preconised.
Of anti-egalitarian thought was thus born ‘the original and fertile idea that the European progress model is not the sole conceivable one and that there is a plurality of possible development paths for human societies to take’.
The conquests, however, follow each other in quick succession. Annam, Tonkin, Madagascar, the Congo, Morocco, Laos: so many names that begin to inspire imaginations. Crowned with laurel wreaths on July afternoons, schoolchildren enjoy their holidays as they carry thick, red books with golden spines bearing the most delightful titles: In Search of the Castaways, The Swiss Family Robinson. The last balloons, the first cars, the first planes. Jules Verne’s books are widely read, as is Le Journal des voyages691 . Minds drift towards desertic continents and impenetrable forests, where mysterious animals and menacing ‘savages’ lurk.
During the Great War, the colonial troops suffer 205,000 fatal casualties. The Tonkinese and Senegalese thus become ‘French by spilt blood’. In implementation of the Treaty of Versailles, the government would send them to occupy the Ruhr.
Controversies and Viewpoints Page 27