Questions about French History
This is an interesting post by a French guy living in the US, entitled: Ten Questions which would instill terror in a French history teacher. Here are my favorites:
1) Why do we find the bloodiest and most corrupted regimes in the former French colonies? (Cambodge, French Indo-China, Central African Republic, Niger, Togo, Haiti etc…)
AND
9) Why is it that in France, we always talk about Americans and oil, and NEVER of France and Oil?? After all, wasn’t it France, through Elf [The major French oil company, partly owned by the French government] which had juicy oil deals with Saddam’s Iraq?
AND
10) Why is it that when the French discuss the Viet Nam war in history class, the REAL causes of the war linked to the French colonization of that country are not mentioned ? Tell me about the bloody repression of the communists there by the French army on June 17, 1930, tell me about Admiral Jean Decoux , named at the helm of Viet Nam by the Vichy government?
The same blogger has a previous post about France's difficulty about dealing with the skeletons it's own closet. They have a tendency to point out the splinter in other countries' eyes, despite the log in theirs. This is something I can attest to after having lived in France, and only meeting people whose forefathers were in the resistance during WWII...it was like all of those who had collaborated with the Nazis just died after the war.
Oh, here's another funny tid-bit...in French, they spell it la Résistance (capitalized). Anything else is just some other resistance...but capitalized it refers to the resistance movement during the Nazi occupation of France. No one does pride better than the French!
1) Why do we find the bloodiest and most corrupted regimes in the former French colonies? (Cambodge, French Indo-China, Central African Republic, Niger, Togo, Haiti etc…)
AND
9) Why is it that in France, we always talk about Americans and oil, and NEVER of France and Oil?? After all, wasn’t it France, through Elf [The major French oil company, partly owned by the French government] which had juicy oil deals with Saddam’s Iraq?
AND
10) Why is it that when the French discuss the Viet Nam war in history class, the REAL causes of the war linked to the French colonization of that country are not mentioned ? Tell me about the bloody repression of the communists there by the French army on June 17, 1930, tell me about Admiral Jean Decoux , named at the helm of Viet Nam by the Vichy government?
The same blogger has a previous post about France's difficulty about dealing with the skeletons it's own closet. They have a tendency to point out the splinter in other countries' eyes, despite the log in theirs. This is something I can attest to after having lived in France, and only meeting people whose forefathers were in the resistance during WWII...it was like all of those who had collaborated with the Nazis just died after the war.
Oh, here's another funny tid-bit...in French, they spell it la Résistance (capitalized). Anything else is just some other resistance...but capitalized it refers to the resistance movement during the Nazi occupation of France. No one does pride better than the French!
posted by CaliValleyGirl at 3:35 PM
1 Comments:
That's some good stuff. Thanks for bringing this blog to my attention. I always love hammering the French.
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