A French Ellis Island? Museums, memory and history in France and the United States

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 63, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 239-253

  Green, Nancy L ^a  

^a ÉCOLE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34447578970     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/dbm011     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Minister of Culture, speech at the inauguration of the worksite at the Palais de la Porte Dorée, 2 Oct. 2006.
2. Cf. letter of instruction, 10 March 2003, from the Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, to Jacques Toubon, creating the Commission de préfiguration; Raffarin also mentioned museums elsewhere.
3. The long and complex history of mass immigration to the United States, beginning in the mid nineteenth century and fraught with periods of rejection and xenophobia, is for the most part forgotten in this vision of US immigration, as is any understanding of the renewal of US immigration historiography in the 1970s-80s. Nancy L. Green, '"Le Melting-Pot": Made in America, Produced in France', Journal of American History 86: 3, Dec. 1999, pp. 1,188-208.
4. Most recently, for a long historical review of the issue: Aristide Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America, Cambridge, Mass., 2006.
5. A good part of what follows on Ellis Island was first published, in French, as: Nancy L. Green, 'L'île le de Monsieur Ellis, du dépôt de munitions au lieu de mémoire', Hommes et migrations 1,247, Jan.-Feb. 2004, pp. 40-7.
6. For the general history of the site, see Wilton S. Tifft, Ellis Island, Chicago, 1990;
7. Thomas M. Pitkin, Keepers of the Gate: A History of Ellis Island, New York, 1975;
8. Harlan D. Unrau, Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty National Monument, Washington DC, 1984, 3 vols.
9. This figure, referring to those third-class passengers who had to be processed through immigration control from 1892 to 1954, varies from twelve to seventeen million, even in the official documentation; the lower figure is the most frequent. At the same time, the digitized passenger lists for the period 1892-1924 are estimated at twenty-two million on the Ellis Island website (http://www.ellisisland.org/search/ index.asp, viewed 10 Oct. 2006). This figure includes immigrants, crew members and other passengers who came through the New York port and is a reminder that immigrants were only half of those coming and going.
10. Sam Roberts, 'The Fort That Let Outsiders In', http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6845, published 29 July 2005 (viewed 5 Oct. 2006).
11. Cited in Tifft, Ellis Island, p. 78.
12. Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Sr, 'The Significance of Immigration in American History', American Journal of Sociology 27, July 1921, pp. 71-85;
13. Marcus Lee Hansen, 'The History of American Immigration as a Field of Research', American Historical Review 32: 3, April 1927, pp. 500-18.
14. See also Frank Thistlethwaite, 'Migrations from Europe Overseas in the 19th and 20th Centuries', XIe Congreès International des Sciences Historiques, Rapports, vol. 5, Histoire Contemporaine, Göteborg, 1960, pp. 32-60.
15. Rudolph J. Vecoli, 'European Americans: From Immigrants to Ethnics', International Migration Review 6: 4, winter 1972, pp. 403-34;
16. Leonard Dinnerstein, Roger L. Nichols and David M. Reimers, Natives and Strangers, New York, 1979;
17. Thomas Archdeacon, 'Problems and Possibilities in the Study of American Immigration and Ethnic History', International Migration Review 19: 1, 1985, pp. 112-34.
18. Roger Daniels, 'No Lamps Were Lit for Them: Angel Island and the Historiography of Asian American Immigration', Journal of American Ethnic History 17: 1, fall 1997, pp. 3-18.
19. http://www.wallofhonor.org/wall_of_honor.asp (6 Oct. 2006).
20. www.ellisisland.com.
21. And not thirty-four million as listed on the Wikipedia article; that figure represents entrance tickets sold, not people; the organizers estimated that people visited the Exhibition an average of four times each. Charles-Robert Ageron, 'L'Exposition coloniale de 1931: Mythe républicain ou mythe impérial?', in Les Lieux de mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora, vol. 1 pp. 561-91, 577.
22. See also Patricia A. Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Cambridge, Mass., 2000;
23. Herman Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945, Ithaca, 1992;
24. Catherine Hodeir and Michel Pierre, L'exposition coloniale: 1931, Brussels, 1991.
25. Patrick Bouchain, film 'Suivez leurs regards', on the CNHI website: www.histoire-immigration.fr on the first page or under link: Inauguration du chantier (15 Oct. 2006).
26. Michelle Perrot, 'Les rapports des ouvriers francçais et des étrangers (1871-1893)', Bulletin de la Société d'histoire moderne 12e série, no 12, pp. 4-9 (supplement to the Revue d'Histoire moderne et contemporaine 1, 1960)
27. Commission internationale d'histoire des mouvements sociaux et des structures sociales, Les Migrations internationales de la fin du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours [1972 conference proceedings], Paris, 1980.
28. Gérard Noiriel, Le creuset français: Histoire de l'immigration XIXe-XXe siècles Paris, 1988 i The French Melting Pot: Immigratio n, Citizenship, and National Identity, Minneapolis, 1996]
29. La mosaïque France: Histoire des étrangers et de l'immigration ed. Yves Lequin, Paris, (1988), 2006.
30. Association Génériques, Les étrangers en France: Guide des sources d'archives publiques et privées: XIXe-XXe siècles, 4 vols, Paris, 1999, 2005.
31. For more information on Génériques, see www.generiques.org. The exhibition catalogue: France des étrangers, France des libertés, Presse et mémoire, Paris, 1990.
32. Toute la France: Histoire de l'immigration en France au XXe siècle ed. Laurent Gervereau, Pierre Milza and Emile Témime, Paris, 1998.
33. The widely-anticipated run-off between the centre-right incumbent Jacques Chirac and the socialist Lionel Jospin turned into a débaâcle when Jospin lost second place narrowly to Jean-Marie Le Pen, far right-wing demagogue. The Chirac-Le Pen stand-off led to an 85% victory for Chirac, but the Socialists went down in ignominious defeat.
34. Toubon is a European deputy and a former mayor of the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris (1983-2001), former Minister of Culture (1993-95), and former Minister of Justice (1995-97).
35. He may inaugurate a very very preliminary facility, only for it to be re-inaugurated by his successor. Similarly, the Bibliothèque nationale de France-site François Mitterrand was inaugurated twice: once by Mitterrand in March 1995, nine months before he died (inaugurating the completion of the main building), and then by Jacques Chirac in December 1996, when the top floor was actually opened. (The rez-de-jardin research floor was not opened until October 1998.)
36. Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard, 'Du "non-lieu de mémoire" à la "CNHI"', Diasporas 6, June 2005, p. 16;
37. see also her 'Une Cité nationale pour l'histoire de l'immigration: Genèse, enjeu, obstacles', Vingtième siècle, Revue d'histoiŕe 2, Oct.-Dec. 2006, pp. 131-40.
38. See the September-October 2005 issue of Hommes et Migrations (no. 1,257) in honour of Philippe Dewitte ('Trajectoire d'un intellectual engagé'), who died tragically of a brain tumour in May 2005.
39. Including myself.
40. Jacques Toubon programmed a reading of Aimé Césaire's Discours sur le colonialisme (1955) as one of the inaugural events of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, on Bastille Day (14 July 2006).
41. Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard, Nancy Green, Gérard Noiriel, Janine Ponty, Emile Témime, Vincent Viet, Marie-Christine Volovitch-Tavarès, Patrick Weil, 'Immigration et Histoire', Le Monde, 29 Nov. 2005.
42. Lequin, La mosaïque France;
43. Daniel Roche, Humeurs vagabondes: De la circulation des hommes et de l'utilité des voyages, Paris, 2003;
44. Leslie Page Moch, Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe since 1650, Bloomington (1992), 2nd edn 2003.
45. For example, Gérard Noiriel, La tyrannie du national: Le droit d'asile en Europe 1793-1993, Paris, 1991;
46. Patrick Weil, La France et ses étrangers: L'aventure d'une politique d'immigration, 1938-1991, Paris, 1991;
47. Alexis Spire, Etrangers à la carte: L'administration l'immigration en France 1945-1975, Paris, 2005.
48. As Jacques Toubon once stated, 'la vie est plus complexe que les définitions juridiques': 29 Sept. 2006, at the CNHI conference 'Histoire et immigration: La question coloniale', Paris.
49. See the film 'Repères' on the www.histoire-immigration.fr. website.
50. Session on 'Les Caraïbes et les métropoles' at the CNHI conference on 'Histoire et immigration: La question coloniale', 29 Sept. 2006.
51. On this conference, see the special issue of Hommes et migrations entitled 'Les chantiers de l'histoire: Historiographie de l'immigration', no. 1,255, May-June 2005.
52. Thus, the Charles-de-Gaulle airport is called 'Roissy' after the city in which it is located; the Pompidou Center is called 'Beaubourg' after the street it is on. And, after great debate over the suggested title 'Musée des Arts premiers', the new museum is officially called simply after its location: The 'Musée du Quai Branly'.