The book published by Fayard returns to the massacre of Italian workmen in the salt marshes of Aigues-Mortes , August 17, 1893, in the manner of books published in the beautiful collection The days that have made the France Gallimard.
parts of the file first: the threshing season, hundreds of workers throughout the region, the Ardèche and Italy converge on the salt marshes of Aigues Mortes, controlled by the powerful CSM is competition between workers to secure a labor cheap. Among them hike, vagrants considered off-the-law because they can not justify an ongoing activity, come to work in the marshes to survive and escape the police authorities. Italian immigrants also come to the season and live the rest of the year pastures. With his usual precision, Noiriel delivers the day's events in perspective, including the incorporation of the rich and powerful CSM single employer in the region, owns most of the territories concerned and even wine producer since the discovery of the beneficial effects of salt to protect vines from phylloxera.
Here are the facts: the massacre by a brawl. The work is hard work in harsh conditions, it requires the cooperation of all in pace. Especially since the workers spend part of the year on the profit they derive from their seasonal wetlands. But Italian workers are more efficient and prepared to work sum that vagrants that slow group. The workers are paid on performance, the Italians are beginning to complain of hike, a brawl ensues (a Piedmontese plunges his shirt full of salt in a bowl of water) leading to the massacre. The crucial element of the story is that the factor National quickly established itself as a key explanatory element: we are dealing with a struggle between the French and the Italians (and not a struggle between vagrants and regular workers, or the result of social conditions disastrous under the authority of the CSM). National Solidarity will cover first and then launder in the silence of the willing public. The author shows that several factors converge precisely at the time to do the reading grid "national" grid reading priority. The Third Republic has done its utmost to strengthen the feeling of national solidarity after the defeat of 70, and since then the presence of the state has steadily grown through a series of institutions, homogenization language, school, army, etc.. The salt marshes of Aigues Mortes long isolated from the mainland were connected by train. Especially - among the most interesting portion of the book - the mass media invented the miscellaneous to seduce its audience with a proven dramatization of the events, where the national community where the French are sometimes presented as innocent victims or valiant hero of tragic or spectacular. Journalistic treatment of the massacre of Aigues Mortes not escape this rule. All combine to make this fight between seasonal workers struggle between nationalities, which leads logically to the innocence of the French tried by the courts and public opinion national public.
Noiriel Gerard said the outbreak at that time of rhetoric about "foreign thieves of French bread" that persists even today. The author denounces especially in terms scarcely veiled promotion of the "pride of ownership" and alerts us to the potential dangers of this "pride of being French." This pride is probably something normal when it is up to society's most favored, because it registers as a source of recognition and appreciation of oneself among other others (diploma, wealth, medals, relationships , etc.). However national pride becomes dangerous when it is all that remains for those who are most needy. When national pride is the last bastion of dignity, it causes tensions, chauvinism and rejection of others. The massacre of Italians attests. "Humiliated by the Piedmont because of their poor physical performance, have hiked the voulur establish their dignity violated by mobilizing the only" quality "that the Republican power according them again: the quality of French" (p 112) This quality their has mainly contributed in specific historical conditions, to build solidarity with people who ignore them in normal times and all prepared to the innocent as part of the same collective 'we'.
This community solidarity is evolving, changing with the court of history. It is not spontaneous, it is also sociologically and historically determined. Comparing with other events (The Murder at Hautefaye village of cannibals in 1970, the massacre in 1962 Charonne Subway, etc.), Noiriel shows that it is sometimes other solidarity prevail, based on a sense of class, ethnicity, according to the interests and the climate of the moment. The construction of "us" is not obvious is the merit of such work to show it.
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