It is all the more a pity in this case, since this point can be relevant. Indeed, the Quebeckers have to evolve in a special environment; they are meeting the challenge of living in French and maintaining a French-speaking society in North America, which is home to 250 million English-speakers. That is why they attach lot of importance to the protection of their language. In 1977, a law was passed by the Quebec Parliament and resulted in “La Charte de la Langue Française”: it is aimed at reducing the use of English in Quebec. The same kind of feeling has just appeared in France, though in a more toned-down way, the acceleration of globalization and the beginnings of a supranational European Union made French people realize that it is important to maintain their own cultural uniqueness.
Another shortcoming in the essay is the starting point of the argument. The author explains it is relevant to draw a parallel between the French and the Quebeckers because they both speak the same language. On the one hand, it could have been interesting to underline that French is not the only official language in Quebec, In Quebec, as well as in Canada, French and English are the official languages, and 50% of the French-speaking population is bilingual. Moreover, the Quebec French has its own particularities, which result from its particular evolution. That is why it is possible to say that despite a shared language, the day-to-day reality can be quite different.
On the other hand, it is easy to find examples where people, who have nothing particular in common, use the same language. It is the case in Africa, where French is still the official language in most of the ex-French colonies. However, there is absolutely no interest to compare the population of France with the populations of Gabon or Cameroon, who had just been victims of the French imperialism.
Now, I am going to examine the substance of F. Drieu’s article. Because of the diversity of his arguments, this part will be subdivided into two paragraphs: the geographical and the cultural considerations.
- Misconceptions in the content:
In the first component of the article, the author contrasts “the empty spaces of Quebec” with “the French ant hill” and argues that the French population is much better distributed over its territory than the Quebec population. With regard to French geography, the reality is not quite so.
In fact, the French population is not so well distributed. In France, some rural regions are under populated because of the rural exodus. In what the geographers call “the empty diagonal”, the population density is very low: in the Champagne region, the population density amounts to 30 inhabitants per square kilometre, whereas the national average is 110. 70% of the French population live on 10% of the land.
In the fifties, J. F. Gravier published Paris et le desert français (Paris and the French desert). The book came as a bombshell because he was the first author to point out the gap that existed between Paris and the Province. Indeed, due to the tradition of French centralism, practically all the economic and political power is concentrated in the capital city. And in spite of some recent changes, this contrast is still in place: 90% of the French economical and political decisions take place in Paris.
I think it is also interesting to add that this idea of good or bad distribution of the population is a very relative notion. In Western Europe, France is generally looked on as an exception if you compare it to countries like Great Britain or Germany, where the population density and the number of big cities are both higher. For instance, in Germany, there are about twenty cities with more than 500, 000 inhabitants. In connection with this, I guess the author is wrong in the data he puts forward. Only two other cities in France (Lyon and Marseille) have around one million inhabitants and seven have more than 500, 000.
But, anyway, even if there is a difference in the way the French and the Quebec population are distributed, does it explain why a Quebecker is not French? As far as geographers are concerned, they think that what can differentiate a population from another is the distribution between the urban and the rural population. This is one of the things that affects the way people live and think. The great divide on big issues, like gun control, always results from opposition between rural and urban populations. In rural areas, people are less open to change, they are always more conservative. And, as the author himself writes it, this divide is practically the same in France and in Quebec. Both are post-industrial societies where the weight of rural regions is in decline.
In this part, I will shed new light on the cultural considerations F. Drieu puts forward in his article.
If you take a look at the statistics about immigration, the situation seems to be quite similar in France and in Quebec: in France, immigrants represent 7.4% of the population, while in Quebec the rate amounts to 8%. However, the author argues that the origin of the immigrants has consequences for the population. In France, it is said that the immigrants mainly originate from the neighbouring Mediterranean countries, which implies they would have lots of things in common. From that assumption, he deducts that the French population is less diverse than the Quebec one. However, the link between Italians and African people is not really obvious, and the author forgets the waves of immigrants from Eastern Europe, such as the polish one that came to France before 1919 and between the wars. So, one can say that the immigrants in France come from different cultures.
In Quebec, the immigrants maybe come from many different areas. But, the main part of the community is made up of the six million French-speakers that descend from colonists who came from France in the 17th and 18th centuries. The author insists that the native people do not really make a difference, as most of them do not live in cities, they try to keep to their own way of living. As a consequence, they are not completely assimilated in the rest of the population.
One of the relevant explanations of the differences between the French and the Quebec population can be found in the model of integration, that is in use in these countries. In Canada, the community model of integration prevails. It puts forward the principle of plural ethnicity: Quebec encourages its people to express their cultural diversity and their sense of identity. It is logical that the Quebeckers attach a lot of importance to their freedom; that is why they escaped the old continent and the ascendancy of the state. In France, however, the republican model of integration is still in use. Each person is considered above all as an individual/citizen that belongs to the French nation. The sense of identity is put aside so that people can more easily become integrated. I think it is important to mention these concepts in order to understand the way that immigrants are assimilated in France and in Quebec.
Finally, according to F.Drieu, the French people are less open-minded towards immigrants than the Quebeckers are. The only argument the author uses to support his argument is the existence of the Front national in France. There is no connexion between the two facts; he makes a very strong conclusion without producing a single piece of evidence. The existence of a radical right-wing party in France, as well as the existence of a radical left-wing party, finds its roots in the French political tradition, not in the tolerance of the French people. To fit the heterogeneousness of the population, there are in France, a lot of parties that embody all the trends of public opinion. In France, there is a weak loyalty to parties; as a result, the voter volatility is high. The French have a tendency to question the current government, and to use the protest vote to express their disapproval of policies. These kinds of radical parties just take advantage of this situation.
In Canada, there is no visible radical right-wing party. But, because of the political tradition, there is no real difference between the two main parties except for their position towards the independence of Quebec. However, it is good to point out that small parties like the Quebec Democratic Action Party or the Canadian Alliance have, with regard to some subjects, highly conservative points of view that would only be echoed in France by radical right-wing parties.
At first sight, this article seems very clear and effective. The reasoning could practically work. But, if you examine in details the different arguments that are used by the author, the result is quite weak. Not only is the structure of the text a bit mechanical, but there are also misconceptions in the content. The author omits one of the main elements that make the difference between two peoples: their history. What counts in the formation of a people, is not what they are at the beginning, but the way they are shaped by events and by their environment.
