The Historian and the Formation of National Identity: The Narrative and Classroom as Lieux de Memoire

Paul Evans
evans2pm@gmail.com


The Historian and the Formation of National Identity:
The Narrative and the Classroom as Lieux de Mémoire

In his work Nations and Nationalism (1983), Ernest Gellner links the emergence of nations with the rise of the industrial era. He argues that the rapid economic change of industrialization and the need for a division of labor required the implementation of nationalism to mold culturally homogenous and educated populations. By his theory, the final step of this process is the creation of nations. What is implicit in this process is the need for new national identities to galvanize nations. In his famous lecture at the Sorbonne in March 1882, Ernest Renan explained, “Nations are…something new in history. What characterizes these various nations is the fusion of the populations which compose them” (Renan, 1882). The fusion of the French population for both industrial and nationalist goals required an articulation of French national identity. After the year 1789, any such conception of a common French national identity had to somehow confront the consequences of the French Revolution. As Krishnan Kumar explains, “everything in the past flowed towards it; everything in the future took its point of departure from it” (Kumar, 10). In his essay The Burden of History (1966) Hayden White explains that beginning with the nineteenth century, the disciplines of art, science, philosophy and history saw that their common task was to interpret the memory of French Revolution (125). This remained the case throughout the nineteenth century in France during which the historians Jules Michelet (1798-1874) and Ernest Lavisse (1842-1922) attempted to define the French national character or genius through their writings. In the face of perceived threats to French republican idealism and fortitude, both historians assumed the responsibility of rehabilitating the memory of The Revolution as the defining event of French National identity. However, as the historian Pierre Nora indicates in Les Leiux de Mémoire, what these historians engender are not authentic memories but rather “artificial creations: ‘places of memory,’ not memories themselves” (Nora qtd in Englund, 305). Just as Nora’s “places of memory” are artificial creations, so too, are the identities constructed at them. For Jules Michelet during the first half of the nineteenth century, the narrative was the lieu de mémoire and the site of identity formation. In the case of Ernest Lavisse nearly fifty years later, the French classroom became the lieu de mémoire and the venue for the formation of French national identity. Thus, the recent historiography of France demonstrates the agency of historians in the formation of national identity.
Nora’s understanding of the relationship between collective memory and national identity is based on a critical distinction between history and memory—lieux and milieux de mémoire. He believes that history becomes necessary when people become aware of the “pastness of the past” and the need for written documents to recall it (Tai, 915). He argues that France’s need for memory has in fact been a need for history—that is, “a recreation of applied critical reason, which fixes the past, but only at the cost of discontinuity and distance” (Nora qtd. in Englund 305). The role of historians is therefore to “respond to the emotional and psychological needs of their citizens” (Englund, 305). When the historian responds in this way his role becomes a political one, his interpretation of past national memory (milieux de mémoire) becomes history (lieux de mémoire), and his narrative becomes an expression of nationalism. This is why Eric Hobsbawm argues in his essay “Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today” (1996) that “historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin addicts: {they} supply the essential raw material for the market (Hobsbawm, 255). Jules Michelet and Ernest Lavisse’s writings must therefore be interpreted as responses to the demand for historically rooted nationalist narratives.
Jules Michelet’s works Peuple (1846) and Histoire de la Révolution Française (1847) are expressions of the revolutionary nationalism of 1848 (Jenkins, 55). Michelet was driven by the reemergence of class cleavages and social inequality in France under the rule of Louis Philippe (1830-1848) (Haac, 500). For Michelet, this was evidence that the spirit of the revolution had not endured. He writes in Histoire de la Révolution Française,

Unanimous! There was a complete and unreserved agreement, a quite simple situation with the nation on one side and privilege on the other. And in the nation, then, there was no distinction possible between the people and the bourgeoisie…..Ah! who would not be touched by the remembrance of that unique moment, which was our point of departure? It was short-lived, but it remains for us the ideal towards which we shall always tend.

(Histoire de la Révolution Française, I, 88-89)

In an effort to revive the character and spirit of The Revolution, Michelet was concerned with establishing continuity between the past and present. Anthony Smith (2004) identifies this process as a convention of nationalist ideologies where the historian resurrects memories of “golden ages” aiming at national regeneration, establishment of continuity, dignity, and destiny (Smith, 20). As demonstrated by his writings, Michelet felt a strong sense of duty as a historian to locate the character of The Revolution in the present and to point out the “chain of destiny and to prepare the people for a free and glorious future” (Haac, 501).
Ernest Lavisse wrote 27 volumes of Histoire de France between 1900 and 1912. Lavisse was known during his time as “the evangelist of the Republic.” He also acquired the nickname “the nation’s teacher” as his short reader Le Petit Lavisse became the primary textbook used in teaching history in French secondary schools around the turn of the century (Kumar, 10). Krishnan Kumar explains that following the Dreyfus Affair and humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, Lavisse “aimed at a comprehensive rehabilitation of the French republican idea” (Kumar 10). In a speech delivered in August of 1905 at the village of Nouvion-en-Thierache, Ernest Lavisse addressed a classroom full of students from his native region. He spoke,
My children, our fatherland is not merely a territory; it is a human structure, begun centuries ago, which we are continuing, which you will continue.
(qtd. In Singer, 414)

By personifying French national identity as a “human structure” and locating it in the past, the present, and the future, Lavisse establishes the continuity of The Revolutionary character and a sense of common destiny shared between generations. Therefore, Lavisse’s task is the same as Michelet’s was fifty years earlier.
However, the point of departure between Michelet and Lavisse begins with how each historian presents his narrative with respect to historical verisimilitude. Michelet was more concerned with composing a compelling narrative than with scientifically piecing together the past. He believed the French national identity should not be treated objectively nor did he accept that as an historian he was obligated to remain neutral in his representation of it. Rather, Michelet injected notions of morality, justice, and judgment into his narrative (Haac, 498). Ceri Crossley (1993) explains, “Michelet abandoned any sense of the historian as a straightforward chronicler of events.” More than a mere “intellectual reconstruction,” Michelet’s narrative was “an impassioned act of recreation” (Crossley, 186). It elicited an emotional response, one that invited the reader to collaborate with the author in constructing French national identity.
By contrast, Ernest Lavisse’s narrative is composed from archival research, documentary evidence and it is generally regarded as a more scientific approach to redefining French national identity. It is not necessarily a more accurate representation of history, but its form implies greater consideration for verisimilitude. Whereas Michelet’s romantic narrative exposes the tension between classes that existed before the Revolution of 1848, Lavisse’s intent was to construct a “single and unified national story that could be employed to encourage a cohesive and patriotic people” (Wright, 206). His method effectively limits the agency of his audience in the recreation of national identity. Suzanne Citron (1989) argues that Lavisse’s narrative never “invites the qualities of lucidity, critical reflection, or tolerance,” nor does it “encourage initiative or participation” (Citron qtd. in Jenkins, 86). Thus, the narratives of Jules Michelet and Ernest Lavisse differ not only in their consideration of verisimilitude but also in their concern for the participation of their audience in identity making.
For Pierre Nora, more important than how or whether the historian engages his audience is where the historian engages his audience. The venue of this interaction has implications for relationship between the historian, his audience, and the formation of national identity. Nora defines a lieu de mémoire as any site “where cultural memory crystallizes and secretes itself” (NoraL 1989, 7). Lieux are symbolic objects of memory—they can be archives, libraries, dictionaries and museums, as well as commemorations, performances, and institutions (Nora: 1989, 11). Lieux are for historians and their audiences the sites where memory becomes history. For French historians including Michelet and Lavisse, they are also where the mythic character of The Revolution can be translated into national identity. To reiterate, for Michelet, these processes took place within the body of his narrative. For Lavisse, known during his time as the “nation’s teacher” (Kumar, 10), history and identity making took place exclusively in the classroom.
Ceri Crossley (1993) credits French historian Augustin Thierry (1795-1856) with redefining the function of the historian as narrator (Crossley, 51). Moving away from the past convention of preserving the reader’s “detachment and freedom,’ Thierry felt that the historian was obligated to envelop his reader “in the seamless fabric of the past” (Thierry qtd. in Crossley, 51). Jules Michelet inherited this redefinition of the role of historian. His narrative provided a venue for participation in that it offered to the reader the possibility of “acceding in turn, at an additional remove, to the revelatory moment (Crossley, 246).” The moment that Crossley is referring to is the moment when the reader becomes aware of his agency in the construction of French national identity. To this end, Michelet intentionally avoided context and temporality in his narrative. Nor did he develop thoughts from one sentence to the next. In a description of this tactic Roland Champagne (1984) explains that reading Michelet’s narrative “demanded interrupting reflections upon the ties connecting the sentences to one another” (Champagne, 47). In this, Champagne argues, Michelet’s reader is “forced to link the interruptions of reading with the text and his or her own self.” This challenge demands that reading Michelet’s narrative be “an activity and a creativity” (Champagne, 48). In Histoire de la Révolution Française (1847-1853), Michelet writes,

Time has perished, space has perished, those two material conditions to which life is subject…A strange vita nuova, eminently spiritual, is beginning for France and making her whole Revolution a sort of dream, at one time delightful, at another terrible….It knew neither time nor space.

(Histoire de la Révolution Française, II, 155-6)

Michelet’s narrative is the site where the historian and his reader collaborate in the process of identity making. It should therefore be considered a lieu de mémoire.
As the chair of the History department at College de France and as an instructor of philosophy and history at École Normale, Michelet’s primary audience was his students (Crossley, 184). He was aware of his position of influence and unafraid to politicize his classroom. His method was to let his students read their books while he “endowed them with the needed enthusiasm and the moral interpretation of history” (Haac 500). Michelet’s tactic apparently worked, as it was the young intellectuals of France who helped to prepare the Revolution of 1848 and later worked to perpetuate it (Haac, 500). After being dismissed from his teaching positions by Louis Napoleon in 1851 for his controversial lectures, Michelet sought out new ways to influence the largest audience possible. He viewed his dismissal as an opportunity to move beyond the narrow confines of his role as teacher and engage a broader audience, “exalting democracy, the harmony of moral life, and education for the people which was to be guided toward a realization of its capacities” (Haac, 500). Thus, Michelet’s role was not merely to instruct from the top down, but more importantly to inspire from the bottom up.
Michelet’s emphasis on recreating French national identity in his narrative stands in direct contrast to Ernest Lavisse’s more scientific and structured approach to accomplishing the same task in the classroom. The difference in style and approach is reflective of a larger change in French historiography that took place towards the second half of the nineteenth century. In The Burden of History (1966) Hayden White explains that historians from this period saw their work as “a combination of romantic art on the one hand and of positivistic science on the other” (White, 126). The role of the historian thus changed in that his task was now in “fusing the new method of social and psychological analysis with his traditional storytelling function” (White, 126). With this, history became narrower in its scope and methods and less interdisciplinary as compared to the first part of the nineteenth century. Concomitantly, its telling became more about instruction and less about inspiration and participation. The aims of both the academic and political world were in accord as history became institutionalized (Wright, 205 and 206). The state demanded a single and unified national historical narrative that could be used to promote a cohesive and patriotic people. Inasmuch as the historian was a tool for nation-building, his task in forging a national identity was also a response to
industrialization’s need for a more educated workforce (Wright, 205). In Les Lieux de Mémoire Pierre Nora describes that during this period the historian was operating “under the state’s aegis,” drafted into national service as “half priest, half soldier,” responsible for organizing collective memory and recreating French national identity (Nora qtd. in Englund, 305).
To restate Nora’s theory, these processes take place at lieux de mémoire, or memory sites. Thus, the lieu de mémoire for Lavisse was the classroom where commemoration became the mechanism by which French national identity was formed. Lavisse’s histories were adapted into textbooks and used throughout France in newly formed state schools. His scientific re-telling of French national past was crucial to the inculcation of republican principles and the forging of national identity (Jenkins, 83). Unlike Michelet whose narrative encouraged interaction and creativity on the part of his reader, Lavisse’s histories encouraged neither collaboration nor participation. Rather than inspiring nationalism, Lavisse instructed it. In A Propos de Nos Ecoles (1895) he writes, “if we flood children’s heads with images of a powerful France, then they will carry these ideas with them forever” (Lavisse, 11). Lavisse addresses his audience (the schoolchildren) at the beginning of Histoire cours Moyen (1912) with a poem,
Child,
You see on the cover of this book the flowers and the fruits of France
In this book, you will learn the history of France.
You must love France because nature has made her beautiful,
And because her history has made her great.

Again, Lavisse’s tone is didactic and authoritative, instructive rather than inclusive. Therefore, in presenting a more scientific organization of history to a captive and impressionable audience, Lavisse’s aim was to inculcate a sense of French national identity.
The democratic movement started by Michelet at the first half of the nineteenth century had been appropriated by the state and it assumed the “guise of a aggressive, overtly political ideology” (Jenkins, 86). During Lavisse’s tenure education in France had been made free, secular, but the tradeoff was that it became obligatory and highly political—an effective tool in “assimilating the children of the diverse traditions of France and building a culturally cohesive state” (Wright, 207). Therefore, the role of historian as custodian of nationalism and French national identity moved from left to right during the nineteenth century. With it, the construction of national identity became less a function of the people and more a function of the state.
Modernist theorists of nationalism including Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Gellner, and John Breuilly contend that both nations and nationalism are uniquely modern phenomena created by industrialization and occurring since the French Revolution (Kumar, 14). Therefore, the role of the historian as author of nationalist narratives and of national identity is also a modern one. The recent historiography of France most effectively illustrates the how modern historians have attempted to forge national identities out of glorified and exaggerated accounts of the past. However, as the comparison between Jules Michelet and Ernest Lavisse demonstrates, the historian’s role has not remained constant since its inception in the wake of the French Revolution. The most telling indicator of how the historian’s role evolved during the nineteenth century has been the change in the chosen lieux de mémoire—the place where the memory becomes history and national identity is recreated. Whereas Jules Michelet’s narrative encouraged the participation of his reader in the construction of national identity from the bottom-up, Lavisse’s didacticism informs his preference for inculcating French national identity from the top-down. Both historians’ approach to forging national identity was shaped by historical context and their relationship to the state. Michelet’s highly romanticized and lyric narrative mobilized people against the state and exposed the tension between classes on the eve of the Revolution of 1848. By contrast, Lavisse’s more objective and scientific approach to forging a unified and cohesive national identity informs his subjectivity to and cooperation with the state. Though from different perspectives and to differing degrees, the work of both Jules Michelet and Ernest Lavisse was influential in the development of the Annales school which includes Pierre Nora in its third generation of historians (Forster, 60). Annales historians have deemphasized the importance of French history since 1789 and instead considered a longer period of history (la longue durée) and a wider range of disciplines in their analyses of French history and identity (Forster, 59). In an article published in Annales journal in 1903 explaining the Annales method and cause, Francois Simiand writes,
We publish this especially for younger historians in order to allow
them to take stock of the road we have traveled in a half-century, and to gain a better understanding of the dialogue between History and the Social Sciences, which remains the goal and raison d’etre of our review.
(Simiand qtd. in Forster, 61)

This represents a break with the political use of history employed 19th century French historians including Michelet and Lavisse. Thus we have arrived at a clear evolution of the role of historian beginning with Michelet who sought to inspire national identity, Lavisse who instructed national identity, and Nora (representing the Annales school) who more purely sought to understand it.
References
Champagne, Roland. Literary History in the wake of Roland Barthes:
Redefining the Myths of Reading. Birmingham, Alabama. Summa Publications, Inc. 1984.
Crossley, Ceri. French Historians and Romanticism: Thierry, Guizot, the
Saint-Simonians, Quinet, Michelet. London. Routledge Publishers. 1993.
Englund, Steven. “The Ghost of Nation Past.” The Journal of Modern History, Vol 64,
No. 2 (June., 1992), pp. 299-320.
Forster, Robert. “Achievements of the Annales School.” The Journal of Economic
History, Vol. 38, No. 1, The Tasks of Economic History (Mar., 1978), pp. 58-76.
Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. New York. Cornell University Press. 1983.
Haac, Oscar. “Michelet’s Purpose.” Proceedings of the American Philosphical Society,
Vol. 94, No.5 (Oct. 19, 1950). pp 494-501.
Hobsbawm, Eric. “Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today.” from Mapping the
Nation. Gopal Balakrishnan ed. New York. Verso Publications. 1996. pp. 255-
266.
Jenkins, Brian. Class and Nation Since 1789. London ; New York : Routledge, 1990.
Kumar, Krishnan. “Nationalism and the Historians,” in Delanty, Gerard and Kumar, Krishnan, The Sage Handbook of Nations of Nations and Nationalism.
London. Sage Publication, Ltd. Pp. 7-20.
Lavisse, Ernest. Histoire de France, Cours Moyen. Armand Colin ed. Paris. Librarie
Armand Colin. 1912.

Lavisse, Ernest. A Propos de Nos écoles. Armand Colin ed. Paris. Librarie Armand
Colin. 1895.
Michelet, Jules. Le Peuple. ed. Paulin, 1846. À M. Edgar Quinet. p. XLIII
Michelet, Jules. Histoire de la Révolution française.éd. Chamerot, 1850, t. 1er, p. XVI
Nora, Pierre. Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations,

No. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory, (Spring, 1989),

pp. 7-24

Renan, Ernest. Lecture at Sorbonne; 11 March 1882
in Discours et Conferences. Paris,
Calman-Levy, 1887, pp. 277-310.
Singer, Barnett. “From Patriots to Pacifists: The French Primary School Teachers, 1880-
1940. Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Jul., 1977), pp. 413-434
Smith, Anthony. The Antiquity of Nations. London. Polity, 2004.
Tai, Hue-Tam Ho. “Remembered Realms: Pierre Nora and French National Memory. “
The American Historical Review, Vol. 106, No. 3 (Jun., 2001), pp. 906-
922.
White, Hayden. “The Burden of History.” History and Theory, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1966), pp.
111-134.
Wright, Sue. Community and Communication: The Role of Language in Nation-State
Building and European Integration. New York. Multilingual Matters, 2000.