Mission to Civilize / Squandering Eden
Williamson, Doug & Rosenblum, Mort & Rosenblum, Mort
W hen the French built their empire in what is now the Third World, they did so not as a colonial power, but as a civilizing power. Mort Rosenblum was introduced to la mission civilisatrice by a...
...But Mitterrand also sent troops to Chad, and it seems unlikely that the French will willingly renounce their right to maintain their imperial prestige—if not their empire proper...
...And throughout Africa, countries want to join the French club...
...But, as in so many other situations, there seem to be insuperable barriers—chiefly bureaucratic ones—to putting these ideas into service...
...We are here for affection...
...Or even an Italian...
...Well-written, save for the occasional cutesy, journalistic colloquialism, and well-balanced, Mort Rosenblum's book offers an admirable elucidation of the French imperial psyche that we would do well to examine carefully...
...And many people have bad feelings about the French...
...And history, needless to say, is what France is all about...
...How indeed...
...Since then, and probably before then, the French have been noted for their chauvinism...
...When the Portuguese explored Madagascar, for example, they found a "naturalists' promised land" that was covered entirely by hardwood forests...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1988 But the real and most disturbing point of Squandering Eden is the ecological damage that is being inflicted on the continent—damage of overwhelming importance that is all too easily overlooked given all of Africa's other sundry problems...
...Mort Rosenblum was introduced to la mission civilisatrice by a French mercenary in the Congo who showed him how to open a wine bottle without a corkscrew, and youngsters in Francophone Africa are still receiving the benefits of French civilization when they go to a newsstand and "browse among the rack of Asterix comic books, reading about their ancestors the Gauls...
...And they come up with an intriguing way of dealing with the foreign debt of certain African countries: "For all the hand-wringing about Zaire's debt, no one seems to have thought of asking Mobuto to write a personal check...
...In Mission to Civilize.- The French Way, Mort Rosenblum—a senior correspondent for the Associated Press who has been everywhere in the French-speaking world—provides a broad and amusing sweep of French history in an attempt to figure out how it is that having "killed hundreds of thousands in colonial wars, France is a Third World symbol of liberty, equality, and brotherhood...
...And so on in virtually every important department, including the armed forces and secret police...
...The French, in this regard, have been much more successful than the stodgy, old inhabitants of Albion, who, though perfidious, lack the French facility for stubbornly pursuing one's national interest under a cloak of dramatic, but benign, hypocrisy...
...How could a German, say, understand that sort of thing...
...you cannot count on them...
...The authors point out that Africa's combined gross domestic product is less than that of Italy, that the purchasing power of most Africans has been in decline for at least the last ten years, and that all the economic aid that has poured into Africa through the United Nations and other sources has often done more harm than good...
...As Rosenblum points out, when France gave its African colonies independence, the process went something like this: "At each new government headquarters, a door was labeled Ministre des Finances, and an African moved in...
...But it might explain why, in 1978, there were six times as many Frenchmen in the Ivory Coast as there had been at independence, and five times as many in Gabon...
...The authors are very good at laying out Africa's troubles and their ideas about how to meet them—such as making use of local talent and insight and not squandering what remains of Africa's resources—are fine as far as they go...
...As Jacques Cousteau testified to a skeptical Rosenblum: "Individually, men have the wisdom to save Africa...
...French chauvinism is its constant force...
...For the sake of the Africans, the wildebeest, and, as Peregrine Worst-home might well add, the British, it might be time to circumvent the African and international bureaucracies and bring back that old imperial rag...
...There is always the promise of beauty and danger' we can see precisely what it is that we are in danger of losing...
...After l'affaire Greenpeace—the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior—Charles Hernu, Frances defense minister, "who is supposed to have lied about the bombing to his old friend, the president, did not go to jail...
...Rosenblum and Williamson write: Four-fifths of Madagascar is barren, burned off by subsistence farmers or herders...
...Indeed, according to de Gaulle, France is history: "Any large-scale human edifice will be arbitrary and ephemeral if the seal of France is not affixed to it...
...Late in 1985, attending a conservation meeting, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and president of the World Wildlife Fund, watched a farmer burn towering baobab trees to clear a cornfield...
...And not even over a glass of wonderful beaujolais can one fully agree with the young French administrator who is quoted by Rosenblum as musing: "We could cut away Martinique with little loss...
...The buffalo, at least, gave way to the world's most productive agricultural system...
...He was not exaggerating...
...Supermarkets in French Africa carry a variety of Camemberts, foie gras, and bottled water from the metro-pole...
...As Louis de Guiringaud, a former foreign minister, puts it: "Africa is the only continent which is still the right size for France, still within the limits of its means...
...quandering Eden: Africa at the AJ Edge, co-written by Rosenblum and Doug Williamson, a liberal South African lawyer turned environmental scientist, is also worth examining, though perhaps not carefully...
...Scientists who know the island well worry that little will remain by the turn of the century...
...Our presence in the Antilles is an expression of that...
...They do not let the Africans off lightly...
...From the air, the diminishing herds of wildebeest on the African plain look exactly like one might imagine the last of America's buffalo stampeding off to the edge of extinction...
...45...
...Today, it is among the most eroded places on earth...
...Those people are not French...
...Rosenblum posits that the French genius that made this possible is the French belief that one "can assume any pose, and command any priority, if it H. W Crocker III is a writer and editor in Washington, D. C is done with conviction and flair...
...Zaire, a former Belgian colony, was allowed in and has enjoyed one of the more important benefits of membership—the protection of the French army...
...As de Gaulle himself once said: "It is a great responsibility to be France, the humanizing power par excellence...
...Like Machiavelli, they believe that since "the time of Caesar, the French have hardly evolved: changeable and lightweight, weak in adversity, insolent in good fortune...
...It is not an ideological book—though two of P. T. Bauer's books are listed in the bibliography and many of his lessons seem to have been absorbed by the authors—but it is rather a commonsensical, anecdotal critique of the environmental, political, and economical disaster area that Africa is becoming...
...F rench literature begins with the Crusaders's chronicles...
...In Guadeloupe, there aremore cars per capita than in the home country...
...The problem is that one sees little hope these ideas will be picked up and exploited with sufficient vigor to stem the tide of disaster...
...There are practical and worthy solutions to the difficulties confronting Africa, and many intelligent people have propounded them...
...Chauvinism, however, has bad connotations...
...Unfortunately, when men get together in a society, they act with more stupidity than dinosaurs...
...Conviction and flair, of course, were not enough to keep Indochina and Algeria in the Empire or to prevent the war in Vietnam from claiming whole graduating classes of St...
...There is a certain naivete, a certain feeling that we can bring something of importance to people...
...The office's former French occupant shifted to a smaller, adjoining room behind his own sign Conseiller Technique...
...Affiliation with France brings many benefits...
...Some people might not believe that...
...Cyr or the war in Algeria from being waged with shocking ferocity...
...MISSION TO CIVILIZE: THE FRENCH WAY Mort Rosenblum/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/$19.95 SQUANDERING EDEN: AFRICA AT THE EDGE Mort Rosenblum and Doug Williamson Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/$19.95 H. W. Crocker III 44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1988 Machiavelli would seem to have a point...
...It has no strategic importance anymore...
...The French, unlike most other Western nations, believe fervently in the idea of pursuing national greatness...
...All of this can be expensive for France...
...France's independent nuclear deterrent, her continued overseas deployment of La Legion Etrangere, her lack of any anti-nuclear agitation, and her expanding efforts to move ahead in high technology are all signs of this...
...What's more, Gabon wants all the Frenchmen it can get...
...They also score the hypocrisy of African leaders who "demand drastic redistribution of global resources but do not share wealth within their own national systems...
...The authors quote one American diplomat who says angrily that "there are more people in Peoria concerned about starving Sudanese than there are in Khartoum...
...Instead, he received the loudest and longest applause of anyone at the Socialist Party congress shortly afterwards...
...They keep their promises poorly and their own interests always predominate...
...But France does not exist but for its culture and history...
...He out-polled everyone in his district for the National Assembly in March 1986, and was mentioned as a presidential candidate for 1988...
...Behind the disappearing wildebeest, there is a desolate, barren sand...
...We certainly make no money from it...
...He told one leader, "Your country is committing suicide...
...It is the only one where France can still, with 500 men, change the course of history...
...Mission to Civilize is an informative and entertaining book...
...When Williamson rhapsodizes about the bush`The richness of plant and animal life, the purity of places unspoiled by man, the pungent smells, and the solitude exude an atmosphere of uneasy tranquility...
...President Mitterrand even went so far as to say that the "colonial era is over, and I will not bring it back even to help you out...
...Or even an Anglo-Saxon who believes that the French are there more out of pride than affection...
Vol. 21 • May 1988 • No. 5
