--- Julie Kemp <juleskemp(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Anthere said:
He ! We indeed consider he was the first king of
France when he was made Christian by Saint R�mi
(even
though we usually refer to him as King of the franks
...). He was the one who started the history of
France, and we are tought he was chosen by the tribe
of franks to be king, and gave its name to our
country. But, what do we know ? It is just what we
learn in school :-) With no proof he was indeed
considered a king at that time.
Another future info fork between the french and the
english wiki :-)
I respond:
I think this is the root of the problem -- What's in
textbooks is not
always accurate! I don't know how it's done in
France, but I think it's
similar everywhere in that much is decided by
committee. If you
subscribe to some of the H-net mailing lists, like I
do, or belong to
the American Historical Association, you know how
bad it can be. Here,
the states of Texas and California have a lot of
influence on what is
included or omitted, because they buy a lot of
textbooks. In fact,
there are cases of textbooks being revised because
Texas won't buy -- a
well-known example is a biology text that talked
about evolution as
something that happened, rather than as a theory
along with creationism.
I think it's not unlikely that many countries
provide their children
with history that often does more to uphold a
national mythos than
troublesome historical fact!
In the French case, what Anthere says, is kinda,
sorta right ;-) Clovis
was the first Orthodox Christian King of a
consolidated Frankish kingdom
-- and the name France is derived from Francia, the
Latin name for the
Frankish kingdom. Where it gets funny is that
Francia is also the root
for the German land of Franken ... or that (and
here's where I find it
odd) the Carolingians are much later, yet both
Germans and French people
consider Charlemagne "theirs." SO what I've been
trying to do is to
explain why the French school version isn't exactly
wrong, but that it's
an over generalization -- maybe like remembering
that Kozsiuszko
(spelling probably way wrong) and DeKalb were heroes
in the American
Revolution and assuming that made them Americans.
BTW (pax to Erik), I
was at a conference in March and brought up this
issue. There were
scholars there from all over, and they all
specialized in the period
between 300 and 800. Not one of them, including the
nice lady from the
Sorbonne, said that they would consider the
Merovingians to be Kings of
France, or even French.
Back until I run screaming ;-)
Jules
That is interesting information; I did not know
Germans considered Charlemagne theirs. But then, we
share so much :-) (sausages, fries, trenches,
ecoregion...)
It is curious none of these people at the meeting
would agree with what is in the end taught to us. They
should be the authors of school programs, should not
they ?
I think history programms are updated about every 50
years or so, except for a couple of chapters in very
recent history. Perhaps, some Merovingians were seen
as Kings of France 50 years ago ?
Note that if I cannot judge this in history, I can
certainly certify this is true in other topics. Some
teachers insist in explaining principles and theories
in geology, biology or ecology which were valid 20
years ago, but are considered vastly wrong by the
research community now. Or, the over-simplification
required at young age just lead to near-false
statements. To a certain point, this can't be avoided.
Before your next run-screaming, do not hesitate to
point out to what you would say are really good
articles in history, so I could list them in articles
"deserving" translation in french (It would be nice
that we attract a nice-lady from La Sorbonne right ?).
That is...I will list them later. I am currently on a
sick-leave from the french wikip�dia. Running away
screaming might be a female habit :-)
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