On this day, 23 February 2005, the French government introduced a law which directed schools to teach about “positive” aspects of French colonialism.
A bill to honour Algerians who fought for France in the war against Algerian independence, a sentence was added which read: “School courses should recognise in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, notably in north Africa.”
Over the course of its history, France invaded and colonised places including Morocco, Algeria, Vietnam, Cambodia, Tunisia, Senegal, the Caribbean, and the present day United States and Canada and many more. As well as many mass killings, like other European imperial powers, France abducted over 1.3 million Africans and enslaved them to work on plantations in its Caribbean colonies, which generated immense riches for wealthy French people.
Pictured: a French ship transporting kidnapped enslaved people.
*
To try to reduce our reliance on social media corporations which could kick us off at any time, we have started an account on mastodon, an open source social network. Follow us here: https://mastodon.social/@workingclasshistory https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1658695300982280/?type=3