The Emperor

A fascinating new phenomenon is taking shape in France. Not for the first time, it is a trend that is long-established in the US and Britain but which is only now finding an outlet over here. It is the growth of what might be called "black history" -- the past as seen through the eyes of Africans and other victims of colonialism. Or should that be "victims of colonialism"?

Till recently this kind of "communautarisme" -- community-based identity -- was taboo in France, where the dogma of equality for all imposed a unified vision of the world. There are no black studies departments in French universities, for example. But times are changing. There is a new restlessness among black French people -- many from the Caribbean territories -- who feel their specific experience of France's imperial glory has been written out of the books.

The symbolic coming-of-age of this movement was the recent publication of a book called "Napoleon's crime." In it Claude Ribbe seeks to establish that the emperor was a racist dictator, who was not just disdainful of blacks but actively connived in their elimination. He even instituted the first gas-chambers, Ribbe argues, which were used to kill black slaves in the holds of ships.

Many Napoleon experts have pooh-poohed his findings as inflammatory and exaggerated. But they have touched a nerve. And the media furore has been further inflated by a row over a ludicrous new law passed by parliament in February.

The law as a whole is innocuous enough -- bearing principally on measures to help French citizens who had to flee Algeria in 1962. But one obscure clause added in an amendment by a private member -- and overlooked by practically everyone at the time -- is breathtaking in its idiocy. It states that "school programmes should recognise in particular the positive role of France's presence overseas."

As every historian of note has said, arguments over the good or bad sides of colonialism are perfectly legitimate. It is perfectly fair to make the case that France brought new standards of medicine and health care to north Africa. But that this version of the past should be enshrined -- however obliquely -- in law is of course another matter entirely.

The row has only fuelled the determination of, and support for, the "black history" school of academics --which is presumably the last thing the sponsors of the law ever wanted.