Destruction of Cultural Heritage in 19th-Century France: Old Stones versus Modern Identities by Michael Greenhalgh

Abstract

Reviews 247 la Méditerranée,voici une lecture qui s’impose et que les esprits curieux ne manqueront pas d’applaudir. Auburn University (AL) Samia I. Spencer Greenhalgh, Michael. Destruction of Cultural Heritage in 19th -Century France: Old Stones versus Modern Identities. Boston: Brill, 2015. ISBN 978-90-04-28920-8. Pp. xii + 427. Greenhalgh surveys the vast array of antiquities sacrificed to the cause of modernization in nineteenth-century France, a significant loss for French architectural identity. The work is “an essential antidote to the official narrative, which proclaims that France generally treasured and conserved her important monuments” (353– 54). Today little remains of the Gallo-Roman structures which were scattered over all of present-day France, including fortifications, amphitheaters, arenas, temples, sarcophagi, villas, baths, and aqueducts. In the succeeding centuries, these structures fell into ruin or were pillaged as sources of building materials for later purposes. Rapid modernization in the nineteenth century accelerated the process of destruction to the point of almost complete eradication of most remains. The central government, commercial interests, and the military all rushed to expand cities, provide modern conveniences, and connect the country through roads and railways. Today the antiquities which remain are located mostly in Provence, the last region reached by industrialization. The dilemma was that“preservation and modernization were simply irreconcilable opposites” (7), and no adequate policy existed to control the process. The population, most of whom were “indifferent to any sense of national memory” (121), accepted the destruction without protest. Important losses occurred in every province. Paris lost almost all of its antiquities, as did the northern towns of Beauvais and Évreux. Reims was more concerned about its historical treasures, yet it lost an ancient triumphal arch to the railway. In Soissons, no trace remains of a Roman theatre or a Gallo-Roman palace. Merovingian cemeteries outside the walls of Rouen,Angers, and Nancy disappeared. Lyon and Toulouse lost all of their standing ancient monuments . A few cities fared somewhat better. Nîmes saved the Maison Carrée, and Narbonne managed to preserve parts of significant structures, but these were the exception. The chief defenders of the antiquities were newly-established sociétés archéologiques, created in dozens of cities and supported by the work of Prosper Mérimée, Inspector-General of historical monuments (1834–1852). Although the preservation societies were no match for the impatient forces of modernization, they deserve great credit for the documents they left behind. Their publications and annals form a major source of information about the structures which were lost. Unfortunately, there were surely others about which no knowledge remains. The acts of destruction impeded the emerging work of France’s archaeologists and permanently diminished the country’s cultural heritage. Greenhalgh is also critical of restoration projects which imposed the restorer’s ideas onto ruins in an implicit attempt to improve on the original. Comparing before-and-after views of Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration of Carcassonne, he laments that “Disneyland starts here.” Readers can get a visual sense of the destruction in the fascinating appendix of 135 annotated illustrations and photographs of lost structures. Written in English with abundant French quotations, this superb study presents an enormous amount of information in a lively and humorous manner. It convincingly challenges the view that the nineteenth century showed great concern for the past. The work belongs in every collection of French history and culture. Southeast Missouri State University Alice J. Strange Knox, Katelyn E. Race on Display in 20th - and 21st -Century France. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2016. ISBN 978-1-78138-309-4. Pp. 229. The book inscribes itself in the panoply of texts that aim at bringing France to forcibly exorcise its past. It is a work about Black presence in French collective memory. Through a combination of several art forms, Knox re-investigates and broadens the matter in addressing it as a central tension that fluctuates between race, ethnicity, immigration, and national identity. The readers will discover through archival inquiry (from various genres starting from art exhibition, children’s comic strips, novels of the Francophone world, African pop songs, to fashion and dance) how the notion of Black as other is produced...