Histoire,mémoire et politique: Débats actuels sur la traite d'esclaves et le colonialism

Abstract

History, Memory, and Politics: Recent Debates about the Slave Trade and Colonialism

French colonial past is often the apple of discord between French historians. This article tries to analyze three reasons for these quarrels: a significant and pioneering historical literature has been forgotten; French education at school has been deficient and silent on the French slave trade and slavery; and many historians refuse to realize that it is a political question that is related to the «national identity », an interrogation including also the public use of history and the – easily committed – confusion between history and memory.