IS THERE ANYTHING NEW TO SAY ABOUT PARIS?

French version

MAIS ABSOLUMENT!

Noticing what is usually skipped reveals a different story and leads to questions that we do not think to ask. They can concern the most famous sites: For example, what is the reason for the huge 19th-century space in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral, that replaced the little houses that crowded almost as far as the façade and that made the giant building a symbol of eternity?  

                                                                                                                                 Uncredited photos are mine.

Why should a site like the Saint-Denis gate, which most visitors have never heard of and whose meaning few Parisians recall be almost completely ignored?  

Ir announces a Sun King victory whose disastrous ripples remain and a vibrant neighborhood where 72 languages are said to be spoken. 

This guidebook stresses observation and the effects of underlying economies on events that are usually seen as political, religious or military. My credentials: a French-American who has lived in Paris for decades, a college professor of history in the U.S. and a tour guide in Paris (as a former member of the Office of Tourism I know its priorities). 

That method transforms the city's image. For its wider relevance, please click. There's space for comments at the end of each page: political discussions welcome.

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TRAILERS TO PART I

PARIS NOW:

As brands dominate the center

creativity moves to the outskirts 

There relatively affordable rents attract innovation in all domains, as shown here and here. And residents of the 13th district voted to light up the passage under the aerial metro for 2026:*

*Through an annual vote through which Parisians choose projects that affect the city's future.

City Hall  video

But this inventivity is only locally known.

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Immigrant creativity is even less recognized. 

• The spectacular Chinese New Year's Day parade, unique in Europe, is only beginning to be noticed. The color of the Asian neighborhood and the inexpensive Tang Frères supermarkets with their plethora of Asian products, are usually ignored.

• Few realize that the city's most visited site is the market and bracelet of Maghrebin shops that line the Barbès métro tracks...

• Or know that the coiffures, moustaches and beards that young men everywhere adopt...

...come from African market signs...

Sign at the Abidjan's Treichville market, 1973. (Notice the "Kennedy" cut.)

...which coiffeurs in Black neighborhoods like that of La Goutte d'Or adopted...

    Poster in one of its 

...and that youths took up world-wide when soccer players for the 2014 World Cup adopted them to be identified on television.

Mathieu Debuchy and Bakari Sagna, Équipe de France / zoom*

They explain the innumerable barbershops and exuberant styles...

Bouno coiffure, 51 rue de la Goutte d'Or, 18th

•  ...that coincides with an art that uses appearance to communicate:

On rue Doudeauville, "Main Street"

"Art must reveal a philosophy. Otherwise it is just decoration," an art critic told me. The looks express an upbeat affirmation of individual uniqueness, and the signs a homogenous, supportive community.

For what the media say, please click.

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THE PAST:

A city of kings and insurrection

The specificity that gives the city such allure are long, wide, straight streets that lead to a point of focus. Kings initiate them to emphasize their power, and fear of 19th-century insurrections  continue them to march troops fast. But kings are reduced to anecdotes and insurrections are so ignored that many people think the figures in an iconic painting are storming the Bastille.

La Liberté guide le people by Eugene Delacroix, 1830-1831 (cropped) / zoom

*Clicking on "zoom" leads to the original image and information about it.

• But the Revolution of 1830 inspired the work. Its three days of combat finished what the French Revolution had begun: eliminate nobles' power. That let capitalism take wing and led to endemic revolts between 1830 and 1871, now largely forgotten. For an account, please click here, for the terror of "barbarian" rebels here and for the city's military transformation here.

• The last and most tragic upheaval led to the Paris Commune, when inexperienced young leaders whom humble people backed ran City Hall from March to May 1871.

          Proclamation de la Commune le 26 mars 1871, anonymous engraving / zoom

In spite of war with the national government, a siege and the flight of seasoned administrators, they sketched out a vision for a genuinely democratic society and kept the continent's largest city running (population a million and a half). 

"They failed because of their great decency," Marx said of these idealists. They succored widows whose men had died fighting them, their nurses tended the wounded on both sides and they did not touch the gold the fleeing government left.

The upheaval itself was due to France's defeat by Prussia. When Bismarck freed 100,000 P.O.W.s to strengthen the reactionary French government, it repressed La Commune in a way that foreshadows genocides.  

Un Peloton d'exécution [firing squad] versaillais pendant la Semaine sanglante by V. Sarday, "Friends of the Paris Commune" / zoom  ("Versaillais:" The government had fled to Versailles.)

The painting made a generation later is based on illustrations of the time and records of adversaries' grudging respect. 

La Commune still inspires the left.

  Commemorative parade, 2021  

• Schoolbooks' take on the insurrections is shown here and here, and that of the historical museum's for...

• The French Revolution, here. 
• The 19th-century upheavals before the establishment's renovation, here. 
• The upheavals of 1830, 1848, "June" and 1851 after that renovation, here, here and here, and for barricades here. 
• La Commune, here and here. 

For the less important revolts there isn't anything. 

• For an example of historians' swing to the right, click here. For two who contest it, here — they are outside the usual university circles. 

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TRAILER TO PART II:

AN APPROACH TO THE PAST

THAT IS CROSS-CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC 

One example: Ostentation erases investible profits to maintain the status quo. 

       A Royal Army on the March,16th-century tapestry (detail), Renaissance Museum

Traditional horsemen in Northern Nigeria / zoom

History from Fresh Perspectives says more.

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This is a "blook,"a book that makes its points briskly through headlines and pictures.

It includes drawings by Harald Wolff. Like the vast majority of Parisian artists he is foreign (German), and lives not in the places associated with them (Saint-Germain, Montmartre, Montparnasse) but in a plebeian suburb (Montreuil) where rents are lower. So he is part of the reality that these pages describe. 

The index, under the menu on the right, gives immediate access to the main ideas.

Contents let is more detailed.  

Epilogues suggests their wider relevance.

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Next,

0.1.

How these views began

 

0.1. HOW THESE VIEWS BEGAN

I GREW UP IN NEW JERSEY...

Where my French maman ignored my saddle shoes and "Seventeen" and detested Elvis. She raised me as if I were French —  the ways of Middlesex County and Paris were so different! Dealing with two truths encouraged reflection.

My junior year was in Paris. I loved its past, which I saw as a series of exploits by individuals in largely political contexts. But a young man I met at the Sorbonne thought differently: to make sense, he insisted, events, attitudes, beliefs had to be placed in their underlying economic contexts, with the practical interests they reinforced or challenged. “And that,” he said, "comes from Karl Marx." 

My fascination for Paris lasted longer than our marriage and I have lived in this magnificent city ever since.

 

My father was a professor and I expected to become one (B.A. Vassar, Masters Harvard, Ph.D. Columbia, all in history). But teaching in a French university then was impossible without a French degree. So I became a tour guide, and this blook is the result.

# # #

A memory: 

Toward 1955, a French aunt, Magda Trocmé, 

whom my dad called "Hurricane Magda" 

came to visit us when on a speaking tour.

She and her husband, André Trocmé, were well-known for their anti-Nazi pacifism and after the war were critical of President Eisenhower's Cold War policies. My father, a stoical New Englander, would leave after dinner, leaving Maman and Aunt Magda to "discuss."

Harald Wolff

"Eisenhower is an old breeches of a general."  "No!!!"

I would listen from the top of the stairs and remember their enthusiasm for exchanging ideas, without expecting to persuade.

 But the discussion may have nuanced

 their extremely vehement points of view.

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Next,

0.2.

Thanks!

0.2. THANKS!

ESPECIALLY TO...

Henry Aubin, Glenn Holliman and Carolyn Ristau for their invaluable critiques, Claude Abron for years of picture-taking and Harald Wolff for his drawings.

Harald Wolff

For other direct help...

• With their photographs: Baroness Danuté, Béatrice Genaudeau, Joëlle Finkpon, Bill Knight, Alain Leiblanc, Cyprian Leym, Camille Mazoyer, Carlton Perrett, Elisabeth Rawson, Ramsay Casadesus Rawson, Carolyn Ristau, Jeannine Sike-Ngangue, Félix Sinpraseuth, Pamela Spurdon, Monique Wells, Jeanne Wikler and Irina Zwergler.

• For factual information: on military history, Marc Ambroise-Rendu; for introducing the "Coulée verte," Paule Girardeau; on Parisian neighborhoods, sites and history, Pascal Payen-Appenzeller; for obscure but important details on monuments, Philippe Schmitt-Kummerlee; for African-Americans, Monique Wells.

• For computer help, Tony Khosravi, Dong Truong Dang and Ramsay Casadesus Rawson.

                     

To those whose pictures come from the Internet...

Photos: Pierre Benite, Luc Boegly, Sigismond Cassidanius, Mathew Fraser, Corey Frye, Juan Francisco Gonzalez, Philippe Guignard, Laurent Grandguillot, Ronald Halbe-Yatzer, Jebulon, Daniel Jolivet, Pavel Krok, Laurence Krongelb,  Daniel Lainé, Stephane Lagoutte, Thibault Le Hégarat, Brian Lin, Bernard Matussière, Baudouin Mouanda, Richard Nahem, François de Nodrest, Andrea Notte, Paris Zigzag, Hanna Romeo, Tangopaso, Alexander Sarlay, Ralf Treinen, Gary Walsh, Jan Wenner and Zig Zagueur.

Drawings: Victor Locuratolo and Alex Varenne.

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Next,

0.3.

Details