Ancient history

Jules Ferry


Jules Francois Camille Ferry, born April 5, 1832 in Saint-Dié and died on March 17, 1893 in Paris, was a French politician.

Jules Ferry is the son of Charles-Edouard Ferry, lawyer, and Adèle Jamelot. First a student at the Collège de Saint-Dié until 1846, then at the Lycée Imperial in Strasbourg (currently Lycée Fustel de Coulanges), he was then a student at the Faculty of Law in Paris. He becomes a renowned lawyer, passionate about politics. He quickly specialized in the legal defense of Republicans. He regularly contributes to the following newspapers:La Presse, Le Courrier de Paris, Le Temps.

An active opponent of the Second Empire, he achieved notoriety by publishing in 1868 an accusatory brochure against the prefect of the Seine, “The fantastic accounts of Haussmann”. He was elected Republican deputy for the 6th district of Paris in May 1869.

Politician considered one of the founding fathers of the republican identity in France.

The Republican Route

On September 4, 1870, he became a member of the National Defense government. Mayor of Paris from November 16, 1870 to March 18, 1871, he was responsible for ensuring the supply of the capital besieged by the Prussian army. The dietary restrictions that had to be imposed earned him the nickname "Ferry-Famine". During the insurrection of the Paris Commune, he fled the city from the first day and was one of the anti-communard partisans.

In the elections of February 8, 1871, he was elected representative of the Vosges in the National Assembly and was re-elected deputy in 1876, a seat he held until 1889.

He was appointed by Adolphe Thiers ambassador to Athens (1872-1873). On his return, he became one of the leaders of the Republican opposition until Jules Grévy was elected president.

The Freemason

On July 8, 1875, the Freemasons give a great solemnity to his reception by the Grand Orient of France (lodge "La Clémente Amitié"). He was received there at the same time as Littré and Grégoire Wyrouboff. Great publicity is given to the speech that Littré delivers on this occasion, and the press gives a wide echo. Subsequently, Ferry will belong to the "Alsace-Lorraine" Lodge

The defender of secular schools

Appointed Minister of Public Instruction from February 4, 1879 to September 23, 1880 in the Waddington cabinet, he attached his name to school laws. Its first bars are:

* Convocation of university degrees withdrawn from private education (03/12/1880)
* Dispersal of unauthorized religious congregations (03/29/1880)

President of the Council from September 23, 1880 to November 10, 1881, he continued to implement the laws on education:

* free primary education (06/16/1881)

* extension to young girls of the benefit of State secondary education (21/12/1881)

Again Minister of Instruction from January 31 to July 29, 1882 (Freycinet Ministry), he continued his school work:

* law relating to the obligation and secularism of education (03/28/1882). This law is a logical follow-up to the law on compulsory education.

* creation of a female Normal School in Sèvres and a female aggregation August 9, 1879

Excerpt from a letter to teachers

“Mr. Teacher,

The school year which has just begun will be the second year in which the law of March 28, 1882 is applied. experience you have just had with the new diet. Of the various obligations that it imposes on you, the one that is certainly close to your heart, the one that brings you the heaviest increase in work and concern, is the mission entrusted to you to give your students the education morality and civic instruction:you will be grateful to me for responding to your concerns by trying to clearly define the character and the object of this new teaching; and, the better to succeed, you will allow me to put myself for a moment in your place, in order to show you, by examples borrowed from the very detail of your functions, how you will be able to fulfill, in this respect, all your duty, and nothing than your duty.

The law of March 28 is characterized by two provisions which complement each other without contradicting each other:on the one hand, it places the teaching of any particular dogma outside the compulsory program; on the other hand, it places moral and civic education in the forefront. Religious instruction belongs to families and the church, moral instruction to school. The legislator therefore did not intend to do a purely negative work. Undoubtedly its first object was to separate the school from the church, to ensure the freedom of conscience of both masters and pupils, to finally distinguish two domains that have been confused for too long:that of beliefs, which are personal, free and variables, and that of knowledge, which is common and indispensable to all, by everyone's consent. But there is something else in the law of March 28:it affirms the will to found in our country a national education, and to found it on notions of duty and right that the legislator does not hesitate to include among the first truths that no one can ignore. For this crucial part of education, it is on you, Sir, that the public authorities have counted. By exempting you from religious teaching, no one thought of relieving you of moral teaching:that would have been to take away from you what makes the dignity of your profession. On the contrary, it seemed quite natural that the teacher, at the same time as he teaches children to read and write, also teaches them those elementary rules of moral life which are no less universally accepted than those of language or of the calculation. [...] »

The supporter of colonial expansion

At the same time, Jules Ferry showed himself to be an active, even zealous supporter of French colonial expansion:Tunisia, of which he obtained the protectorate on May 12, 1881 by the Treaty of Bardo, Madagascar, he launched the explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza to conquer the Congo , Tonkin. This last file will be fatal to him during his second presidency of the Council, which began on February 21, 1883. He had moreover reserved the portfolio of Foreign Affairs for himself. It should be noted that then the conservatives, like Adolphe Thiers, were opposed to colonization, which they accused of diverting investments outside the territory, while the progressives were favorable to it for idealistic reasons. But the Republican left of Georges Clemenceau is also opposed to it because the colonialist adventures divert attention from the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. The positions will reverse diametrically in three or four generations.

Having obtained by a vote of the Chamber the credits necessary for the conquest of Tonkin, he provokes an extension of the conflict to China. The announcement of the evacuation of Lạng Sơn, which earned him the nickname "Ferry-Tonkin", triggered violent parliamentary opposition and caused his fall on March 30, 1885. He then experienced a wave of unpopularity in France.

Excerpt from the debates of July 28 and 30, 1885 [edit]

Jules Ferry delivers a speech that Charles-André Julien was able to say was "the first imperialist manifesto that was brought to the Tribune."

Ferry theme

“There is a second point, a second order of ideas that I must also address (...):it is the humanitarian and civilizing side of the question. (...) Gentlemen, we must speak louder and more truthfully! It must be said openly that indeed the superior races have a right vis-à-vis the inferior races... [Rumors on several benches on the extreme left.] I repeat that there is for the superior races a right, because there is a duty for them. They have the duty to civilize the inferior races. (...) »

Georges Clemenceau's response, July 30, 1885

“Here, in proper terms, is M. Ferry’s thesis and we see the French government exercising its right over the inferior races by going to war against them and forcibly converting them to the benefits of civilization. Superior races! Inferior races! It will soon be said. For my part, I am singularly reduced since I saw German scholars scientifically demonstrate that France had to be defeated in the Franco-German war, because the Frenchman is of an inferior race to the German. Since that time, I confess, I look twice before turning to a man and a civilization and pronouncing:man or lower civilization! (...)

It is the genius of the French race to have generalized the theory of law and justice, to have understood that the problem of civilization was to eliminate violence from the relations of men among themselves in the same society and to tend to eliminate violence, for a future which we do not know, from the relations of nations among themselves. (...) Look at the history of the conquest of these peoples that you say are barbarians and you will see there the violence, all the unleashed crimes, the oppression, the blood flowing in streams, the weak oppressed, tyrannized by the victor! This is the story of your civilization! (...) How many atrocious, appalling crimes have been committed in the name of justice and civilization. I say nothing of the vices that the European brings with him:alcohol, opium which he spreads, which he imposes if he pleases. And it is such a system that you are trying to justify in France in the homeland of human rights!

I don't understand why we weren't unanimous here in jumping up to protest violently against your words. No, there is no right of so-called superior nations against inferior nations. There is the struggle for life which is a fatal necessity, which as we rise in civilization we must contain within the bounds of justice and right. But let us not try to cover violence with the hypocritical name of civilization. Let's not talk about rights or duties. The conquest that you advocate is the pure and simple abuse of the force that scientific civilization gives to rudimentary civilizations in order to appropriate man, to torture him, to extract from him all the force that is in him for the benefit of so-called civilizer. It is not the law, it is the negation of it. To speak in this matter of civilization is to join violence with hypocrisy. »

Note that Clemenceau's point of view is marginal at this time; if opinions differ as to colonization for economic reasons (does colonization bring in money or not? Should wars be financed for African - or Asian territories? Isn't it better to invest in France instead of to waste our money on foreigners?), the debate on the superiority of the white "race" or on human rights, will only take place later, mainly after the First World War. In 1885, the concept of race had not yet acquired the current blasphemous character and scientists had "succeeded" in proving that the white man was superior to other "races". Clemenceau, perceptive, understood that these theories serve as a pretext to justify a policy of plunder contrary to human rights.

Few politicians of the time, regardless of their persuasion, questioned the idea of ​​racial superiority. The right, illustrated by Thiers, demands that French money be reserved for the French. The left is more concerned with human issues, but also criticizes Jules Ferry on economic points.

The great intellectuals of the time were favorable to colonization, making it possible (according to them) to advance the "backward" peoples. Victor Hugo defends the policy of Jules Ferry in the name of human rights; there is nothing paradoxical about it if we assume that the white man is "more advanced":he then has a duty to civilize, to bring evolution to less developed peoples, like the Romans to the Gauls in the past, example dear to Ferry). Hugo insists that colonization should only be temporary.

Here is finally the "economic" part of the harangue quoted above. The economic character (true source of the debate), occupies the extreme majority of the remarks of Jules Ferry, July 28, 1885:

The economic role of colonization according to Ferry

“Competition, the law of supply and demand, freedom of trade, the influence of speculation, all this radiates in a circle which extends to the ends of the world. This is an extremely serious problem. It is so serious (...) that the least informed people are condemned to already foresee the time when this great market of South America will be disputed and perhaps taken away by the products of North America. . We have to look for outlets... [The humanitarian passage quoted above is taken from this part of the speech] I say that the colonial policy of France, that the policy of colonial expansion, the one that made us go, under the Empire, in Saigon, in Cochinchina, the one that led us to Tunisia, the one that brought us to Madagascar, I say that this policy of colonial expansion was inspired by a truth on which we must nevertheless call a your attention for a moment:namely that a navy like ours cannot do without, on the surface of the seas, solid shelters, defences, supply centers. (...) To radiate without acting, without getting involved in the affairs of the world, (...) is to abdicate, and, in a shorter time than you can believe, it is to descend from the first rank to the third and on the fourth...”

Political setbacks

Dropped by the Radicals, Jules Ferry failed to be elected President of the Republic on December 3, 1887. A week later, he was shot and wounded by a baker named Aubertin. In the legislative elections of September 22, 1889, he was defeated by Mr. Picot, but became Senator of the Vosges in 1891, then President of the Senate on February 24, 1893.

When he died on March 17, 1893, the government decided to give him a state funeral, but his family refused because the government and Clemenceau in particular had sought by all means to discredit Ferry. He is buried in his family vault in Saint-Dié.

Quotes

Colonization

* "Colonial policy is the daughter of industrial policy"

* “Settlements are the safety valves of our economy”

* "The superior peoples have the right and even the duty to civilize the inferior peoples"

* "To radiate without possessing is to abdicate"

Patriotism

* “The honor of the flag must come first. »

* “I wish to rest in the same tomb as my father and my sister, facing this blue line of the Vosges from which rises to my faithful heart the complaint of the vanquished. »

* “When we are strong, we will have the certainty of being able to negotiate. »

Other

* "Equality is the very law of human progress!" It is more than a theory:it is a social fact, it is the very essence and legitimacy of the society to which we belong. »


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