The battle for France's history

A row over the republic's colonial past is being waged on one particular Parisian street, reports Jon Henley

A very French row is currently raging over an otherwise unremarkable 110-yard-long street on the border between the tres chic first and eighth arrondissements of Paris.

It pits the capital's new Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, against the conservative mayor of the eighth, Francois Lebel.

Both sides have mobilised their troops, and the battle promises to be long and bloody.

This is only appropriate, as it happens, because the row centres on the fact that the street concerned is named after one General Richepance, a famed Napoleonic commander who walloped the Austrians at Hohenlinden and put down a nasty rebellion on the French island of Guadeloupe.

In commemoration of the former, the good general already has his name engraved on the Arc de Triomphe, which as every tourist should know is a monument to the military exploits of the diminutive Corsican-born emperor (and not to all the brave men and women who have died trying to reach it by crossing the terrifying Place de l'Etoile).

The problem, however, is the general's second memorable feat. Since the Guadeloupe rebellion was led largely by unhappy former slaves and led to an estimated 10,000 deaths, Richepance's repression of it is seen by many more enlightened Parisians - including Mr Delanoe - as a distinctly dubious achievement.

At a recent ceremony in the Hotel de Ville celebrating the 153rd anniversary of France's abolition of slavery, the mayor said he had "no intention of allowing ambiguous traces of France's history to persist on the walls of Paris". Mr Delanoe intended to "debaptise" the rue Richepance as soon as administratively possible.

He is supported by George Pau-Langevin, who heads the very French National Agency for the Insertion and Promotion of Workers from French Overseas Territories. For Ms Pau-Langevin and the rest of the Delanoe camp, Antoine Richepance was a particularly brutal and bloodthirsty colonialist.

"He was charged by Napoleon with re-establishing slavery on Guadeloupe in 1802, despite the fact it had been banned eight years earlier," she says. "He was extremely zealous, to the extent of imprisoning, deporting or selling for his own profit even the black troops he had used to put down the rebellion."

Mr Lebel, the mayor of the eighth, disagrees. "Antoine Richepance," he says, "was a hero of the republic. At one stage he was even considered too republican. He was sent to Guadeloupe and asked to put down the rebellion by the governor. The Larousse encyclopedia says he exercised his functions in a spirit of tolerance."

Mr Lebel, backed by the forces of the right and the estimable and ultra-traditionalist Academie Francaise, wants to know if this is not part of some underhand bid by Mr Delanoe to have have the general's name removed from the Arc de Triomphe as well.

"This is a truly grave historical error," he said. "It is revisionism of the most worrying kind, worthy of the methods of totalitarian regimes."

Rather provocatively, the Delanoe camp has already come up with a few alternative names for the beleaguered rue Richepance. They include the rue Delgres or the rue Ignace (two of the rebel slave leaders), as well as the rue Toussaint Louverture (the former slave who successfully headed a similar revolt in Haiti).

Another alternative is the rue Solitude, the name of an escaped Guadeloupe slave woman who joined the resistance and was later captured and sentenced to death. (She was allowed by the generous authorities to give birth to the baby boy she was carrying before being executed.)

Lastly, the forces of the left are considering renaming the rue Richepance the rue du 27 avril 1848. That, as every French schoolchild will tell you, was the date the French government finally, formally and officially got round to outlawing slavery.

So battle lines are drawn, and may the best man win.

As the nation celebrates the achievements (and completely ignores the failings) of Francois Mitterrand, who was elected president 20 years ago tomorrow, and as a furious debate rages about whether French troops were guilty of torture during the Algerian war of independence (of course they were), it just goes to show that you don't mess lightly with French history.


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