As Graham Robb explains in a book to be reviewed in a future issue, within the vast expanses of pre-modern France - almost three times the size of Britain - communities of largely immobile countrymen were separated not only by space but also by linguistic and cultural differences which readily translated into hostility towards outsiders, even those from neighbouring parishes. The task of the modern state, from Napoleon onwards, was to attempt to overcome this negative local consciousness and create a sense of "France" and "Frenchness". As this happened the negative feelings towards "outsiders" were re-oriented to include anyone from beyond the national borders. It is this which explains the persistent character of Gallic racism.

The feeling of national exclusiveness was challenged and also strengthened by the coming of immigrants from other countries which occurred precisely as a sense of a unique Frenchness was being officially encouraged. This was what confronted the successive waves of Italians and Spaniards, Poles and Armenians, North Africans and Asians (and others). By government they were welcomed as augmenting a numerically inadequate native population. At the local level, and in some national politicians, they have often aroused disdain and hostility and been seen as a threat to "the French identity".

Such feelings are still current, as we well know. Although one French person in three has at least one "foreign" ancestor, for many people it's still true that "stranger means danger" and politicians have to take account of this in some way. The present campaign against illegal immigrants is arguably the least harmful way of assuaging such feelings. More positively, the contribution of immigrants to the national identity is highlighted at the recently opened Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration in Paris. A project of the often bumbling but essentially decent Chirac, its opening was curiously (and mistakenly) snubbed by Nicolas Sarkozy, anxious, maybe, not to appear too positive about the idea of immigration (funny, that, when you think about it). Incidentally, there's a section devoted to ... the English. See www.histoire-immigration.fr

From Riviera Reporter 124, Dec 2007/Jan 2008

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