Father of France

Chapter 246 Mediterranean Perspective on History

"I think I should dye my hair blonde too," Ava Gardner muttered to herself, recounting her shopping trip in District 16 as if it were a treasure trove. Koman went to the Orthodox church to pray, and then bought a copy of Das Kapital.

In response to this behavior, Koeman explained that he was a modernist. Ava Gardner repeatedly asked what a modernist was before she learned that it was an acceptable way of saying atheism.

While strolling around, Koman's eyes kept wandering to the blonde, blue-eyed Russian girls, which finally made Ava Gardner unable to resist and keep saying that she wanted to dye her hair.

"I was just looking around," Koman explained, kissing the back of the woman's hand. He figured pursuing beautiful things couldn't be a bad thing, right? He hadn't done anything wrong.

Koeman is the kind of person who would readily say things like, "You're the only one in my heart."

If you're shameless enough, you can have anything. Ava Gardner's discontent has turned into a sigh: "You'll talk back to me."

Henri Valon, representing the Valon School, has begun to advocate for education to cover everyone, but it hasn't received much attention yet. Most people don't realize that the real intention is not to promote this idea to native French people, but to people in overseas departments.

Koeman then used Martin, who was working in Paris, to discuss the population statistics of the overseas departments. "There are two hard standards. No matter what the statistical ratio is, the non-Arab data must exceed 50%. The second standard is that the total population data, whether it is 12 million or other figures, must be reduced by 1 million when published. If it is 12 million, publish 11 million to leave enough room for our comrades."

Martin could easily understand the second point: by leaving enough room for maneuver through numerical manipulation, the French forces in the three overseas provinces of Algeria would face less pressure during the suppression.

As for the first point, Martin was quite interested in asking where this tactic came from. The British seemed to have done it before, but that was in a colony. The political status of French overseas departments was the same as that of the mainland. Could this kind of policy guidance be used in administrative units like overseas departments?

"It's not just Britain that does this," Corman replied meaningfully. To be honest, if it were only Britain doing it, Corman might not necessarily follow suit; he followed the Soviet Union.

Faced with a large population and a nation that has a history of regional power, the Soviet Union would choose to support a weaker one, as seen in its treatment of the Central Asian peoples.

Who were the traditional hegemons of Central Asia? The answer is the Uzbeks. The Uzbeks have the most glorious history, a large population, and the strongest civilization. Their agricultural production is also mainly located within Uzbekistan.

Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, although Uzbekistan abandoned Lenin's ideology, it did not forget Lenin's organizational methods.

Uzbekistan has poverty alleviation policies and officials, but they are no longer called cadres. The reason for the difficulties is the conscious suppression during the Soviet era.

The specific actions involved supporting Kazakhstan, suppressing Uzbekistan, and expanding the territory of sparsely populated Kazakhstan. This not only involved giving Russia's own land to Kazakhstan, but also dividing up much of the land where Uzbeks had long lived.

Even so, Uzbekistan remained a large country, so Turkmen and Tajik were adjusted and upgraded from the earliest established Uzbek Soviet.

The Tajik Autonomous Republic was upgraded to the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, which was directly under the Soviet Union, and seceded from Uzbekistan.

Turkmenistan, after being integrated and separated from Uzbekistan, has become completely incomparable to Kazakhstan in terms of size, except for population, as the traditional hegemon of Central Asia.

Although the collapse of the Soviet Union benefited the Kazakhs, Koman believed it wasn't a mistake of division. He felt the strategy of suppressing the Uzbeks, the largest ethnic group in Central Asia, was very successful, and the collapse was a result of the Russians' own stupidity.

It's important to understand that before the collapse of the Kazakhstan regime, the largest ethnic group in Kazakhstan was not Kazakhs, but Russians. How could politicians like Yeltsin make such a decision? It's simply incomprehensible to the average person.

“Splitting it up doesn’t seem like a big problem, but it doesn’t completely solve the problem either.” Martin felt that this was only a temporary solution, but he couldn’t think of any other way.

“Simply dividing cultures is certainly not enough. Destruction without reconstruction, as you said, can only solve the problem temporarily,” Koeman replied helplessly, hands in his pockets. “But a nation is an imagined community, and it must also abide by fundamental laws. It depends on how we shape it.”

The example of this is Kazakhstan. As the last republic of the Soviet Union to gain independence, the first problem Kazakhstan faced after independence was the foundation of its state. At that time, there were two factions in Kazakhstan: those supporting the Turks and those supporting the Mongols.

Ultimately, due to the existence of Mongolia, the voices of Turkic supporters prevailed, and Kazakhstan thus became a Turkic state.

However, supporters of the Mongols have always existed in Kazakhstan, even though Kazakhstan and the Mongols are not linguistically closely related. Ultimately, under the impetus of Tokayev after the Great Khan, and thirty-four years after independence, the Kazakh parliament once again began to search for the foundation of the state. The Republic of Kazakhstan recognized Jochi Khan, the eldest son of Genghis Khan, as the historical founder of the state, and the Golden Horde he established as the ancestor of the Kazakh Khanate and the modern state of Kazakhstan.

The state protects and promotes the historical legacy of Jochi Khan, and is committed to using it as a symbol of civic unity, multi-ethnic harmony and cultural identity.

The Education Law and the Language Law were revised simultaneously: a compulsory course titled "The Era of Jochi and the Golden Horde" was introduced in the fifth grade of primary school; the Almaty-Astana high-speed railway was renamed "Jochi".

After 34 years as a Turkic state, Kazakhstan is now moving closer to Mongolia. I wonder what Turkey thinks about this. If Kazakhstan were to withdraw from the Turkic state, the already existing but unrealized Great Turkic entity would be reduced by more than half.

Since a nation is an imagined community, it can certainly be changed. France has already experienced this, and the Gallo-Germanic historical view ultimately triumphed over it.

Martin had been searching for the literary figure that Corman considered his personal writer, a historian renowned in the field of history. He found Fernand Braudel, who met the requirements because his works focused on Mediterranean civilization.

This aligns perfectly with the prevailing view within France that both the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean belong to France, and Algeria is merely an overseas department, not a colony.

The other two historians who received the invitation were George Debbie and Robert Mandrou.

This dialogue actually went very well. Historians are more pragmatic than educators, especially Fernand Braudel, who is practically the best spokesperson for what France advocates now.

Koeman didn't hide anything and stated frankly upon meeting that the Gallic view of history, which we believe our ancestors were Gauls, was no different from a fart in the eyes of most people in the overseas provinces.

The Gallic historical perspective, which was shaped during France's process of achieving centralized power and dominating Europe, is ineffective across the Mediterranean.

The Gallo-centric historical perspective was quite effective for the Holy Roman Empire and later Germany, but it's no longer suitable for Africa. As for the earlier Germanic historical perspective, it's even less effective than the Gallo-centric one for Africa.

"To be honest, influenced by the French National Policy, France may be moving closer to the Roman Empire in its pursuit of Latin culture and leadership in the Latin world. This will be more effective in winning over Iberian Peninsula countries like Italy and Spain, with a focus on the Mediterranean region."

Once again, Koeman himself mentioned his own work, even though he had almost forgotten about his plagiarism. He only remembered it in the last two years while he was in French Indochina.

Looking back now, Corman was also a prolific writer. His outline of the French nation did indeed include content on Africa, stating that the Muslim question and the general colonial question could only be resolved one day in a unified Latin-African world.

However, the economic alliance of the colonies must be perfected through an economic alliance of the mother country.

The Latin Empire was fundamentally political; therefore, what gave rise to and inspired this empire was an ideology with special political implications.

Always overseas, Koeman had forgotten how he copied it in the first place, but now that he's talking about North Africa, he suddenly remembers it all. This is the driving force behind promoting the new history textbook.

Fernand Braudel immediately understood and offered a reason: “The native Gallic historical perspective is deeply rooted, but it also emphasizes the cultural and ethnic integration of Gaul by the Roman Empire, which is not a problem. We can first establish a new historical perspective in the textbooks of the overseas provinces, and then revise the native textbooks later.”

“So when should we start?” George Debbie asked.

Robert Mandrue then posed his own question, "Is the main idea in this direction critical or critical?"

"It's a critique. As for when it started, it's from the early days of civilization. There's a group of Berber descendants in the overseas provinces. Of course, we don't know the exact number yet. We'll do a count later."

Koman then shifted his focus, saying, "Starting with the emergence of the Berbers, we emphasize their status as the original inhabitants. Then comes the Carthaginian invasion, the Roman era, and the Arab era. We need to work on the content, focusing on the Carthaginian invasion, the Roman prosperity, and the Arab invasion."

The Berbers are not descendants of the Carthaginians; their true descendants are in Tunisia. If France annexes Tunisia, it could use a different narrative to its advantage, thus having more common ground in resisting Arabization. If all else fails, it could portray the conflict between Rome and Carthage as a civil war within Mediterranean civilizations. There are many ways to achieve this.

(End of this chapter)