Creole Medievalism: Colonial France and Joseph Bédier’s Middle Ages

2. Medieval and Colonial Attractions

· 26 ·· CHAPTER 2 · Medieval and Colonial Attractions The educational policies that made Roland central to republican pedagogy soon popularized epic nationalism, for they reached every child who attended school. These same children also learned of France’s obligations to advance civilization overseas. Outside of formal instruction, French citizens encountered medievalism and colonialism in numerous everyday venues—from newspapers to advertising to caféconcerts to church. Some of the most spectacular manifestations took place during the expositions universelles, or World Fairs. All of the expositions that took place inParisduringBédier’sresidence(1889,1900,1931,1937)featuredreconstructions of medieval and colonial settings. Each exposition materialized for millions of visitors the importance of both the Middle Ages and the colonies to French national identity. Creative architecture and performances aimed to persuade the public of the value of imperial nationalism. Organizers envisioned that visitors would leave the exposition with a new sense of national unity. To this end, the expositions combined didacticism and seductive exoticism to foster both medievalism and colonialism as expressions of republicanism. By frequently conflating distant times and distant places, the expositions reveal the mutating role of “otherness” in the national imagination, with direct affects on metropolitan conceptions of Réunion. In constructing medieval and colonial buildings, exposition organizers suggested that two of France’s least visible attributes (its medieval past and its overseas dominions) symbolized its most cherished aspirations. Although the colonies were by their nature “out of sight,” the relative invisibility of the medieval was a new phenomenon in Paris. In the 1850s, the emperor Louis-Napoléon initiated the modernization of the city, replacing its sinuous medieval topographies (and dangerously unhealthy sewer system) with large avenues punctuated by monuments to imperial triumph.1 For its critics, this process traded medieval prestige for colonial MEDIEVAL AND COLONIAL ATTRACTIONS 27 denigration. Prosper Mérimée compared enthusiasm for the new city to the dance of “negroes around a scalp,” while Louis Veuillot complained that the new cityscape made even the monuments that remained as foreign as the Egyptian Obélisque (installed in 1836).2 By the beginning of the Third Republic, then, the Middle Ages had become almost as “virtual” as the empire in urban Paris. Represented by a few monuments shorn of their historical contexts, the medieval and the colonial became equally available for reconstruction as fabricated sites of national longing. As celebrations of French achievements, the expositions also engaged France’s perennially fraught relations with Germany. The exposition of 1900 originated partly in reaction to German plans. Following vigorous press debate and politicking in both countries, the French government announced its exposition in 1892, much further in advance than previous expositions.3 Official German representatives came to France for the first time since the Franco-Prussian War, with an exhibit that used more space and brought more tourists than any other foreign country.4 Even though the French government and its citizens had certainly not forgotten the defeat of 1870, official guides treated the German exhibits with the same enthusiasm as those from other countries.5 This moment of partial reconciliation contrasts sharply with the colonial exposition of 1931, in which Germany had only a small stand in the information center. Meanwhile, France showcased how it had improved Germany’s former colonies, Togo and Cameroon (assigned to French protection in 1919).6 In fact, the exposition’s earlier title, Exposition Coloniale Interalliée, specifically excluded Germany (neither a colonial power nor an ally). The exposition thus sought to bolster unity within France by focusing on colonial nationalism , while consolidating European alliances as a deterrent to future German aggression.7 Six years later, the 1937 exposition signaled new political alignments: the German pavilion faced off with the USSR’s, framing the entrance to the other international pavilions with monuments to fascist grandeur.8 Together, the expositions of the Third Republic crystallize the history of Franco-German relations that informs both colonialism and French medieval studies. In addition to illustrating some of the dominant themes of republican nationalism (medievalism, colonialism, anti-Germanism), the expositions also capture the ideals of the Réunionnais elite and the emergence of Bédier’s public status as an iconic creole subject. Colonial exhibits generally featured the colonies’ economic resources or indigenous exoticism. 28 MEDIEVAL AND COLONIAL ATTRACTIONS The relatively small, immigrant society of Réunion had little to offer in terms of either. Yet the Réunionnais elite, natives of a “colonizing...