Since the end of the 19th century, Lille and the rest of France have continually celebrated the memory of General Louis Faidherbe. Streets and schools bear his name. Triumphal statues stand in his honour in the heart of our cities (zoom in on the map).
There is, however, an unbearable scandal here. For Faidherbe was a fierce colonialist. He massacred thousands of Africans in the 19th century. He was the key player in the conquest of Senegal. He defended the most abject racist theories all his life.
If we consider that colonisation is a crime against humanity, then we must face the facts: the man our cities honour daily is a criminal of the highest rank.
See: Questions & Answers (to those who want to keep Faidherbe)
Of course, officially, it is not Faidherbe’s ‘colonial work’ that these streets and statues celebrate: it is his ‘achievements’ in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. At the head of the Northern Army, it was he, we are told, who enabled the region not to fall to the enemy. A tiny “victory” in the midst of a generalized debacle thanks to which Faidherbe is still glorified nowadays by patriots of all stripes.
However, two hundred years after Faidherbe’s birth in Lille in 1818 and forty years after the “twinning” of Lille and Saint-Louis of Senegal, in 1978, now is the time to learn about the other dimensions of this dubious character, sometimes described as the “father of French imperialism”[1].
Honouring a criminal?
During a contemporary art exhibition organised in Lille in the summer of 2017, a placard placed below the equestrian statue next to the Place de la République painted this pithy portrait of our regional “hero”: “Louis Faidherbe was a great soldier. He brought back from his travels a wealth of knowledge about African cultures and territories. In the following pages, we will show how scandalous is this irenic portray.
See: Challenging colonial symbols: a global movement
Current and future generations must know what kind of murderer Faidherbe was as well as all those who, like him, massacred in the name of “civilisation” (and “superior races”). The consensual glorification of these criminals is an insult to the peoples they martyred and a daily spit in the face of their descendants.
Faidherbe must fall !
Download: Faidherbe must fall” campaign brochure (pdf)
[1] This is the case, for example, of General Maurice Faivre in a text published in January 2011 on the website “Études coloniales”.