Observation #1: France is really, really old.
While France's depth of history may be obvious that doesn't mean it's not impressive, even on a daily basis. This is the first in a series of an American's observations.
France is really, really old.1
I know, I know. This is obvious. But it wasn’t until I moved to France that it sunk in. I’m a liberal, college-educated, studied-abroad, 40 year-old American and I’m an absolute idiot when it comes to World History, let alone French history. This observation hits me daily and I wasn’t prepared for that.
My small world was first rocked in middle school when a German exchange student in Charleston, South Carolina remarked that “this city is old for you, but it’s not old like Europe.” At the time I had been entrenched in Southern education which puts South Carolina at the center of the world (I was actually taught about the “War of the Northern Aggression”) and Native Americans were spoken of in the past tense. I learned about Christopher Columbus but not Portugal. I learned about King Charles but not England. The French materialized during the American Revolution and vanished. I believed America was old and Europe was an afterthought.
Before I moved to France I completely underestimated how much history I needed to catch-up on.
Our kids are being exposed to European history on a level they wouldn’t be in America. I occasionally help them with their homework, including labeling parts of medieval castles and identifying weapons from the Iron Age. As I learn alongside our kids it’s striking to me: There is no “discovery of Europe” story. When white French people learn about the Gauls they are learning about their ancestors. This puts American history, and the way it is taught, in a very different context.
At dinner last night our eldest, 12 years old and in her second year of French public middle school, observed that American history is kinda disappointing.
“It usually starts with Christopher Columbus but there was way more interesting history before he arrived,” she said at the dinner table. “I want to know more about that history.”
History is easier to learn when it’s broadly shared. It’s easier taught when it is agreed upon. The history of France before it started colonizing is literally set in stone and a source of pride. It may improve with scientific discoveries but it’s essentially unchanging. Very sadly, Americans do not share this broad, baseline history. I was taught American history differently than my husband, who was born and raised in California. American history gets twisted. The way it is documented and taught depends on so much opinion. American history hurts.2
Here in Bayonne, the city is rejuvenating a fountain and square in front of the cathedral and the project’s dig revealed human bones. As an American I read the headline and felt a pang of sadness for the bones. Accustomed to unmarked bones indicating tragedy in places like South Carolina and British Columbia, I thought construction would stop and the town would have to come to a reckoning of past atrocities. But these weren’t sad bones. They were interesting bones.
“A tibia or a femur?” a local reporter asks (the Sud Ouest office actually overlooks the construction site). “In any case, ‘the person must have been tall, the leg member is impressive.’”
The article goes on to answer more pertinent questions: Yes, the project will be completed on time and on budget.
Bones were discovered while Bayonne’s Place Louis Pasteur and fountain were under construction but the project continued without a hitch. Photo by Regina Sinsky-Crosby
I walked to the site, which can be seen from our front door, on the day the article was published and construction was moving along as if nothing had been discovered. There wasn’t a shrouded grave. My friends shrugged when I asked them about how they felt about the bones. Meantime every time I walk by the fountain I smile and think “the leg member is impressive.”
French history is impressive. I have a lot to learn. I’ve started a chat here on Substack. Please share some of your favorite history books, both French and American!
The “oldest Parisian” is an estimated 200,000 year old neanderthal. In America we are asked to “leave our minds open” about the oldest bones in the New World with most estimates put them between 15,000 to 20,000 years ago and one heavily disputed estimate of 130,000 years for some evidence found in San Diego.
Obviously French history is fraught and downright racist but there hasn’t been the nationalized and normalized movement to ban books and rewrite or erase history like in America. Yet.