@gildedbat @jeffowski

What a stark contrast with contemporaneous #French people in #Europe!

While this woman in French-speaking #Quebec was riding around town, smoking, and enjoying view from a rented hearse, #France was forming the French #ThirdRepublic after losing the #FrancoPrussianWar to #Germany.

Also, #German Chancellor #Bismarck was presiding over the newly proclaimed and unified #GermanEmpire, twirling #Napoleon's sword after the French surrender.

https://archive.org/details/exile2p

Exile to Paradise: Savagery and Civilization in Paris and the South Pacific, 1790-1900 by Alice Bullard

Topics
#Kanak, #Kanaky, #genocide, #france, #frenchrevolution, #pariscommune, #newcaledonia, #colonization, #indigenouspeoples, #antiblackness, #southpacific, #exile, #whitesupremacy, #Melanesia, #history, #frenchimperialism, #frenchcolonialism, #thirdrepublic, #communards, #colonizers, #war, #paris, #savagery, #penalcolony, #penalcolonies, #Melanesians

According to the poet Victor Hugo, the year 1870/71 was France's année terrible. The country suffered a humiliating defeat by the Prussian military, and Parisians endured a cruel siege. In the wake of the siege, Paris exploded and revolutionaries proclaimed the birth of the Paris Commune.

The conservative government of the young Third Republic portrayed the Communards as savage destroyers of civilization. The Communards were depicted as plagued by original sin, the evil nature of fallen man, and atavistic degeneration.