AskHistorians

Disclaimer: I hope you won't mind that lengthy reply, if you do by all means feel free to not read it. It's just something I consider both fascinating and essential, more than worth sharing and discussing ;)

It's also that France historically has always been both a very self-aware Nation/population (grossly simplified: the Francs, since Clovis approx in the year 500) and a very diversified/rich and oftentimes very conflicting collection of smaller groups of very different populations, with very different cultural backgrounds and values. Groups whose interests and objectives predictably were not the same.

Half seriously, but still half seriously, I would say one of the best representation of that French 'type' and how deeply it is is part of our ‘nature’ to constantly be fighting one another, can be found in the ‘Asterix’ series of comics. I’m only considering the original Uderzo/Gosciny collaboration here, as I have very little interest for the contemporary remakes.

I don’t think there is a single album in which there is not at least one strip showing some kind of violent dispute happening in-between the villagers themselves while the country is being invaded and their own village is being besieged by the powerful Roman armies. More often than not they’re fighting one another about absurd things, like the (lack of) freshness of the fish sold by the fish seller or the (lack of) quality of the music of the bard or some other non-sense like that. But at the same time, there is not a single album that doesn’t end up in a joyful reconciliation, around a banquet, celebrating our unity through our differences (which I always considered the true magical potion, to be honest) after they managed to teach a good lesson to the all mighty Roman armies if not directly to Caesar himself. One album after the other.

But like often, looking history is the most fascinating way to realize how nuanced (and rich) realty is.

Before France became the republic it has been since 1789, it was a monarchy. I would think most people with basic notions regarding France’s history and its monarchy will know that monarchy for two things: the ‘absolute monarchy’ or the ‘divine right monarchy’ (an undisputed king that has been put where he is by god himself) and ‘Louis XIV, le roi soleil’, the ‘sun king’ and his Versailles palace. This king being the legit the epitome of the ‘absolute monarchy’.

That would be correct but at the same time that would also give zero idea of the incredible variety, and the constant internal fights and changes that were going on.

At the very beginning of the kingdom of France, sometime after the collapse of the Carolingian empire and the troubled times that followed, the first ‘king of France’, Hugues Capet was… elected. So much for the 'divine right monarch' ;)

He was one of the aristocrats owning the lands of the various provinces of what was not yet looking anything like what the country of France would one day look like. And if Hugues Capet himself was already powerful he was far from being the most powerful aristocrat, his fief was not even the largest one back then (the amount of land owned back then was the equivalent of the amount of dollars and/or aircraft carriers a country owns today). It’s only slowly (it took centuries) through smart alliances, manipulations, treason and diplomacy, constantly going on (with their unavoidable setbacks) that this first election led to the undisputed powerful divine right monarch that Louis XIV incarnated centuries later. Undoubtedly a very powerful monarchy but one that also very collapsed very quickly after Louis XIV passed away: he died in 1715 and it is in 1789 (less than 75 years later) that France declared itself a republic (and in 1793, they beheaded his grandson, the last king of France).

The idea is that France was a very diversified and complex nation, whose impressive monarchy was built upon constant compromises and constant disputes.

Nowadays, this variety tends to fade away as there have have been a lot of work done to… standardize the population through a Nation-wide standardized education system. But even there, it took a lot of time: Richelieu created L’Académie Française in... 1635, as a mean to impose the French language to the very many regions and provinces who insisted on speaking their own regional languages and in doing so were putting themselves out of reach from the central monarchist power (and were claiming their right to self-determine). It also had to standardize units and measures for the same reason.

If today even the mere knowledge of that very rich and conflicting past tends to vanish, as history is barely being taught anymore nowadays to the general public and to our kids, and the little that is still being taught is being done in overly simplistic terms, like really it’s frightening. No matter what, French people still have that natural tendency to not back away from constant arguing, it’s what we are. I sincerely doubt any amount of ‘standardized reeducation’ will be able to change that.