Ce texte est une version traduite et adaptée du billet déjà publié « Faut-il tourner la Statue de la liberté vers l’Amérique ? » préparée pour mes amis américains.

Should the Statue of Liberty Face America?

Sometime in February 2020, I was invited to take part in debates at the Saint Petersburg World Affairs conference. This gathering in Florida—Saint Petersburg is also the name of a city north of Tampa Bay—brings together military officers, diplomats, academics and experts of every conceivable kind to discuss the affairs of the world.
I was there in my capacity as a « Parisian intellectual », because, as you may have noticed, merely being Parisian and having attended a French primary school is enough to give one interesting ideas about everything. I was therefore waiting to take part in a debate when a mountain of a man approached me: one of the security guards responsible for keeping the event safe. Rather timidly, he asked :
–Are you French ?
-Yes! » I replied. (In contemporary Floridian, « yes » means « oui. »)
-Then I want to thank you for the help your country gave us when mine was founded. Without you, we would never have succeeded.
Perplexed, I took a closer look at the man and realised that he was African American, and therefore possibly descended from the Black soldiers who fought on the side of the American Revolution. Yet this far south, it was just as likely that this mountain of a man was descended from ancestors who had been deported from Africa to Louisiana by… the French.
I was therefore seized by an unfathomable sense of vertigo, and gave him a reply intended to temper somewhat the self-importance of the « Homeland of human rights » (one of the names the French give to their country).
-Oh, you know, if « we » did that, it was mainly to annoy the British…

A less refined expression had crossed my mind, but I refrained from using it out of respect for this good man and, I must admit, also for… our British friends !

Those pesky Parisian intellectuals!

Surprised, but also disappointed by the failure of his attempt to fraternise, …, he nodded before walking away, solemnly and in silence. What did he make of my reply? I interpreted his solemn nodding as yet another acknowledgment of my high status as a Parisian intellectual. This felt perfectly natural to me, considering that Parisian intellectuals, with their opinions on everything, have long exerted a global influence…
Some 150 years ago, a group of them provided a striking example of this strange phenomenon. In the early summer of 1865, these distinguished Parisians gathered in Glatigny, a district of Versailles, at the home of the Parisian jurist, senator and writer Édouard de Laboulaye (1811–1883). Besides their host, those present included Oscar de Lafayette (1837-1911), grandson of the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834); Charles de Rémusat (1820-1882), a liberal journalist and advocate of parliamentary government; Hippolyte Clérel de Tocqueville (1797–1877), brother of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)—the latter being well known in the United States for his book Democracy in America—and the Alsatian sculptor Auguste Bartholdi (1834–1904).
Their purpose was to celebrate the Union’s victory in the American Civil War and to share their outrage at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) by a Confederate sympathiser, only five days after the end of hostilities.
Two of the principal minds behind the idea of offering the Statue of Liberty to the newly century-old American democracy were present that evening: Édouard de Laboulaye and Auguste Bartholdi. In the ultraroyalist context of France at the time, these « liberals » were roughly equivalent to those whom we might now describe as moderate left-wingers…
We do not know what they discussed that day, but the idea of a statue emerged after a fundraising campaign organised by the newspaper Le Phare de la Loire (litterally : « The Loire Lighthouse ») to present a gold medal to Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882), the great man’s widow:

This medal indeed bears the inscription:

Dédiée par la Démocratie française à Lincoln, honnête homme qui abolit l’esclavage, rétablit l’Union, sauva la République, sans voiler la statue de la Liberté.

meaning:

Dedicated by the French Democracy to Lincoln, an honest man who abolished slavery, restored the Union, saved the Republic, without veiling the statue of Liberty.

Veiling the Statue of Liberty? The metaphor is circumvented, but it was clearly still present in the mind of Édouard de Laboulaye when, about 10 years later, he summarized his idea for a colossal statue in New York Harbor, while it was being realized by Auguste Bartholdi:

It is about erecting an exceptional monument in memory of the glorious anniversary. In the middle of New York Harbor, on an islet belonging to the Union of States, opposite Long Island, where the first blood was shed for independence, a colossal statue would rise, silhouetted against the sky, framed on the horizon by the great American cities of New York City, Jersey City, and Brooklyn. At the threshold of this vast continent full of new life, where all the ships of the Universe arrive, it will emerge from the waves, representing: Liberty Enlightening the World.

In 1871, Bartholdi made his first visit to New York, and upon entering the harbor, he spotted Bedloe’s Island, an islet with Fort Wood. Now known as Liberty Island, this islet seemed to him an ideal location, as the statue would be visible from all ships arriving in New York. In 1875, after a fundraising campaign in France initiated by Édouard de Laboulaye, Auguste Bartholdi designed the statue, whose structure was conceived in Levallois-Perret (to day a suburb of Paris) in the workshops of Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923). A preliminary assembly of the copper pieces that would cover it then took place at 25 rue de Chazelles in the 17th arrondissement of Paris:

During the construction, crowds gathered in Paris to see the elements of the statue being created. An entrance fee was charged, and to supplement the funding, « souvenirs » were sold, depicting the concept of the « Centennial Commemorative Monument of the Independence of the United States, » as represented by the Franco-American Union:

Finally, between 1883 and 1886, a huge pedestal was built on the old fort where the colossus of Rhode Island—no, pardon, of Bedloe Island—was erected. As the work was nearing completion, the newspaper L’illustration published an image and a note to report on its progress, humorously commenting on the preparations for the inauguration:

Measuring 46 meters high, the Statue of Liberty thus rises 93 meters above the Atlantic, while her torch is 110 meters above the waters. She has become one of the most famous and well-known monuments in the United States, attracting nearly 4 million visitors each year, along with Ellis Island. This federal reception, control, and admission center for immigrants arriving through the port of New York opened its doors on January 1, 1892, a little over five years after the inauguration of the Statue of Liberty. Between 1892 and 1924, nearly 12 million immigrants passed through this center after seeing « Liberty Enlightening the World. »
They undoubtedly felt that her stern face, reminiscent of Juno, expressed the New World’s disapproval of the tyrannical excesses of the Old World. Holding a torch in one hand to guide people toward American freedom, she carried in the other what, in the eyes of Parisian intellectuals, was supposed to protect that freedom: the admirable U.S. Constitution, stamped with the date of the Declaration of Independence—July 4, 1776, or JULY IV MDCCLXXVI. The birthdate of the land of liberty, where everyone is so free that they can become whatever they want!

American freedom—for whom?

The enthusiasm of Parisian America-lovers stemmed from the fact that, since its founding with the help of the kingdom of Louis XVI (1754–1793), the young republic appeared to them as an endeavor aimed at achieving freedom. But freedom for whom, exactly?
Shortly before the American Revolution, the Thirteen British Colonies along the northeastern coast of North America had largely participated in the British war effort during the Seven Years War. It began on the American stage as early as 1754, and is known today in the United States as the “French and Indian War.” The British colonists in America had provided provincial troops and militia to fight the French and their Native American allies. This serves as a reminder that, throughout history, the New England colonies were very hostile toward the French of America (the Canadians), to such an extent that, as soon as the French settled along the St. Lawrence River, the “Bostonians” organized one expedition after another to put an end to their presence. Fighting alongside British regular troops, they ultimately contributed to the capture of Quebec City and then to the surrender of Montreal in 1760.
The British victory, which preceded the Declaration of Independence by about fifteen years, was resounding. At the end of the conflict, France lost Canada, its continental possessions east of the Mississippi, most of its political influence in India, as well as several settlements in Senegal. However, this global conflict had also been costly, so the United Kingdom sought to tax the colonists more to recover its expenses. It particularly wanted them to finance the troops stationed in America to defend the newly acquired territories and to monitor the trans-Appalachian frontier, mainly against Native American nations.
It was these attempts at taxation that sparked the American struggle for « liberty. » The colonists demanded above all the right to participate, through their representatives, in fiscal decisions affecting them—an idea that contained the germ of political sovereignty and democracy.
However, another source of tension existed with the British Crown: many colonists also wanted to appropriate lands to the west to establish farms, sometimes plantations, or to speculate on their value. This led them to view the French, who dominated much of the area beyond the Appalachians before the war, as obstacles, and the Native Americans living there freely as populations to be pushed back or dispossessed, if necessary by war and destruction.
Heavily indebted from the war, the British Crown wanted to avoid new conflicts with Indian nations, at least for a time. By the Royal Proclamation of October 7, 1763, it had temporarily prohibited the settlement of colonists beyond a line roughly following the Appalachians. Many colonists, particularly land speculators, veterans, and frontier inhabitants, concluded that British troops were there, among other things, to prevent them from advancing. The Crown, for its part, wanted to avoid the costs of border wars that turbulent colonists might trigger and maintain control over westward expansion of the continent.
In hindsight, this policy may seem wise, in that it could have allowed for a more gradual colonization of North America, less immediately violent for indigenous populations. However, it did not constitute a definitive protection of their territories: the line of separation was pushed westward several times, notably by the controversial Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768.

Could Native Americans have retained more of their freedom? We will never know. But the disappearance of British oversight liberated and accelerated the « conquest of the West, » that is, the often wild appropriation of territories successively claimed by the French, British, and Spanish Empires, but inhabited and controlled by indigenous nations. After the cession of Louisiana to the United States by Napoleonic France in 1803, this “conquest” gained momentum and accelerated, gradually transforming into a relentless—and at times genocidal—persecution of Native American nations. Previously, the latter had managed to integrate the relatively modest French and Spanish presences into their own commercial and diplomatic networks, despite occasional conflicts.
By 1830, the often violent settlement of American colonists was already so advanced that Congress adopted and President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) signed the disastrous Indian Removal Act (18 of may 1830). This law institutionalized a policy of ethnic cleansing aimed at moving Indian nations living in the states and territories east of the Mississippi westward. While these large deportations continued, the « conquest » did not stop at the great river: it extended through the acquisition of Oregon in 1846 and then California and a vast Southwest in 1848. These purchases facilitated continental colonization and the construction of the first transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869.
Thus pressed from all sides, the Indian nations of the Plains put up a remarkably efficient and intense military resistance against a much better-equipped European-style army. Among the most famous was that of the Quahada Comanches, in which Quanah Parker (1845–1911) participated, son of Comanche chief Peta Nocona (born around 1820 and died around 1864 or 1865.) and Cynthia Ann Parker (born arount 1824-1825 and died around 1871), an Anglo-American child captured and then integrated into Comanche society. After the defeat of the Comanches in the Red River War, he accepted in 1875 to join the Fort Sill reservation and then endeavored to help his people survive in the newly imposed order.

An ecocide fosters cultural genocide.

It must be said that the massacre of bison, carried out on an industrial scale thanks in particular to the railroad and tolerated, even encouraged, by certain military authorities, deprived the Plains peoples of their essential economic resource. This ecocide, largely commercial but politically useful for their subjugation, rendered their traditional way of life impractical and forced them into reservations that represented only a fraction of the territories necessary for their movement, hunting, and autonomy.
The result? While around 1776, approximately 600,000 to 700,000 Native Americans lived in what would become the continental United States—many of whom were part of nations still politically autonomous—their numbers had dwindled to about 300,000 after the Civil War.
Despite the roughly 750,000 deaths caused by this war, the United States already had nearly 33.6 million people classified as « white » by 1870, 4.9 million classified as « colored, » primarily African Americans, and about 63,000 Chinese and Japanese. Only 25,731 Native Americans were included in the regular census as « taxed Indians »; the approximately 288,000 others, living in reservations, dependent on federal agencies, or still belonging to nations maintaining some autonomy, were only subject to administrative counts.
By 1876, one hundred years after the declaration of independence, while a large portion of the indigenous survivors of European expansion was already confined to reservations, only a few nations still resisted the dispossession of their lands.

African Americans betrayed by the Revolution

After Native Americans, African Americans represent the second major group whose rights to freedom were denied by the American Revolution, despite the principles proclaimed. Indeed, the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence begins as follows:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the principal author of the Declaration, married Martha Wayles Skelton (1748-1782), a young widow from a wealthy planter family. After the death of her father, the couple inherited vast properties, heavy debts, and 135 enslaved individuals. This indebtedness undoubtedly contributed to Jefferson’s financial difficulties, but it does not fully explain why, despite the values professed in the Declaration of Independence, he only freed a very small number of the more than 600 people he enslaved during his lifetime.
This personal contradiction illustrates that of many Founding Fathers: while championing Enlightenment values and the notion of liberty, they primarily applied them to white men participating in political life (not to white women).
Their inconsistency stemmed particularly from the fact that Southern states relied more heavily on plantation agriculture based on slavery, whereas Northern states combined family farming, trade, crafts, and maritime activities, long before becoming truly industrialized. The interests of the Northern and Southern states therefore already diverged significantly. Thus, although the Constitutional Convention was primarily convened because the Articles of Confederation did not provide the central government with the means to levy taxes, regulate commerce, or enforce its decisions, it was also necessary to create greater coherence among a collection of states with divergent interests and cultures, some of which were fundamentally pro-slavery.
Therefore, more than the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution is the true foundational institutional document of the current American nation. This explains why every new president must swear to « preserve, protect, and defend » the Constitution. It was signed on September 17, 1787, and ratified by the required number of states in 1788, so that the government of the new federal state began functioning legally on March 4, 1789, more than twelve years after the Declaration of Independence and six years after the Treaty of Paris, by which the United Kingdom recognized the United States as « free, sovereign, and independent » states.
Far from reiterating and applying the principle that « all men are created equal, » contained in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the Constitution merely states in its preamble the desire to secure « the blessings of liberty » and avoids instituting a general principle of equality. The delegates knew that the Union could not be formed if the slaveholding states felt their interests were threatened. To finally create a coherent nation out of the United States, they granted several constitutional guarantees to slave owners:

-To allocate seats in the House of Representatives and direct taxes among the states, “three-fifths of all other persons” were taken into account—that is, slaves, who were indeed part of their population since they were considered “persons.” This rule automatically increased the number of representatives and electors from slaveholding states, to the benefit of their voters and slaveowners, without granting any rights whatsoever to the slaves who were thus counted.

-Before 1808, Congress could not ban the importation of slaves into states that wished to maintain slavery, but it could impose a tax not exceeding ten dollars per person imported. The transatlantic slave trade was thus protected until 1808. Congress passed a ban in 1807, effective January 1, 1808, but smuggling persisted; moreover, the domestic slave trade continued to be widely practiced until the Civil War.

-All fugitive slaves were to be returned to those who claimed them, even if they had managed to reach a state where slavery had been abolished.

In general, the framers of the Constitution avoided naming slavery, referring only to « all other persons, » « importation of persons, » or individuals « held to service or labor. » This compromise in vocabulary foreshadowed what was to come: while some Northern delegates sought to avoid explicitly recognizing a property right over human beings, they allowed Southern delegates to ensure that the Constitution effectively protected the institution of slavery and even became a source of increased political power for slaveholding states. Thus, the Convention had secured the formation of the Unionat the cost of maintaining and protecting slavery.
As if it were taken for granted, the Constitution produced by the convention did not guarantee political rights to enslaved individuals—many of whom had fought on the American side during the Revolution—nor to women; it also did not recognize the political citizenship of Indigenous peoples living in their own nations. In the long term, this introduced a political, economic, and moral contradiction that would contribute to the outbreak of the Civil War, triggered by the secession of Southern states in an attempt to preserve their slaveholding social order and the deprivation of freedom imposed on their Black population. In the meantime, Louisiana, an old French colony that became an American state, had joined these states, with Creole (of French origin) and Anglo-American planters aligning with the other Confederate states. This is why the gentleman who thanked me in Florida for France’s role during the American Revolution troubled me: since he was from the South, his ancestors could very well have been captives of Louisiana French Creoles…
It was only after the Union won one of the first major industrial wars in history that the Constitution was amended: in 1865, the XIII Amendment abolished slavery; it was followed in 1868 by the XIV Amendment, granting former slaves citizenship and guaranteeing equal protection of the laws to all persons, and then in 1870 by the XV Amendment, prohibiting the denial or restriction of the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. These advances were admirable, but we all know that, in practice, the deprivation of voting rights, racist violence, and segregation measures largely made African Americans second-class citizens well into the 1960s and beyond.

And what about France, in the meantime?

Like that of the Thirteen Colonies, the economy of the Kingdom of France was partly slave-based, as its colonies – among them Louisiana – were societies founded on slavery. The then-unique example of an American republic composed of citizens rather than subjects certainly contributed to inspiring the French Revolution. Closely aligned with the values expressed in the second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence, Articles 1 and 2 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 logically implied the incompatibility of slavery with the new values:

Article 1: Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may only be based on common utility.

Article 2: The purpose of any political association is the preservation of the natural and inalienable rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

The Convention nationale—namely, the revolutionary assembly that governed France from September 21, 1792, to October 26, 1795—abolished slavery in the French colonies on February 4, 1794, under the joint influence of the egalitarian principles of the Revolution and the insurrection of enslaved people in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), which had already led the commissioners of the Republic to proclaim emancipation locally. This revolution, which became known as the Haitian Revolution, was itself part of the broader movement of Atlantic revolutions initiated by American independence, but it was particularly linked to the French Revolution and the specific conditions of the slave society in Saint-Domingue. However, concerned with restoring colonial order and the prosperity of the sugar-producing islands in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, Napoleon Bonaparte maintained and reinstated slavery in several colonies through the law of May 20, 1802, and sent an expedition to regain control of Saint-Domingue.

After the crushing failure of this powerful expeditionary force, Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758–1806) had proclaimed the independence of Haiti on January 1, 1804. France refused to recognize the new state and contemplated a reconquest of its former colony for several years. It was not until twenty-one years later, in 1825, under Charles X (1757-1836), that France officially acknowledged the independence that the Haitians had won by arms. This recognition, however, was imposed under the threat of 500 cannons from a powerful French fleet: the royal ordinance also required the payment of 150 million francs meant to compensate the colonists, including former slave owners. The former enslaved people had stolen their freedom from their masters, and, therefore, had to reimburse them.

The long layers of France
giving birth to its democracy

After the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, during which France waged numerous wars across Europe and violently extended its domination over a large part of the continent, the country experienced several changes of regime. Following Napoleon’s definitive defeat in 1815, the victorious European powers favored the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. However, it was not possible to fully return to the Ancien Régime (Old Regime): the gains of the Revolution, liberal ideas, and soon the memory of the Napoleonic Empire retained considerable influence. Louis XVIII (1755-1824) thus granted the Constitutional Charter of 1814, under which his brother Charles X also reigned. When Charles attempted to restrict its scope, the July Revolution of 1830 overthrew him and brought Louis-Philippe (1773-1850) to power, who accepted a revised version of the Charter. However, these political transformations did not prevent the maintenance of slavery in the French colonies until its definitive abolition by the Second Republic in 1848.

The conquest of Algeria

Another stain tarnishes the French monarchy’s flag bearing the fleur-de-lis: the brutal conquest of what would become Algeria. In 1830, the expeditionary force sent by Charles X against the Regency of Algiers—a largely autonomous state formally belonging to the Ottoman Empire—landed at Sidi-Ferruch on June 14 and captured Algiers on July 5. Charles X was overthrown a few weeks later during the Trois Glorieuses uprising on July 27, 28, and 29. This insurrection brought together liberals and republicans, as well as a Parisian population composed of workers, students, bourgeois, and notably Parisian intellectuals !
However, the monarchist liberals managed to sideline the Republic and bring Louis-Philippe to power, at the head of a constitutional monarchy, thus more liberal than that of Charles X. The Algerian expedition was therefore not undertaken by a Republic claiming the motto « Liberty, Equality, Fraternity »—as this became the primary principle of the French Republic only in 1848 with the founding of the Second Republic—but by the monarchy of Charles X, which was then engaged in an authoritarian turn. The violence of the conquest, which began under Charles X, continued and intensified under the July monarchy. From 1841, General Thomas Robert Bugeaud (1784-1849) generalized a strategy based on raids and the destruction of villages, crops, and livestock. In April 1842, Armand Jacques Leroy de Saint-Arnaud (1798-1854), a future marshal of France, wrote to his brother: We are in the center of the mountains between Miliana and Cherchell. We fire few shots; we burn all the douars, all the villages, all the huts; the enemy flees everywhere with their livestock. The enemy? You mean the civilian population?

I will not detail the conquest of Algeria, which began in 1830 and continued, depending on the regions, for several decades. However, some testimonies strikingly attest to its great brutality. In a letter written in Philippeville on March 15, 1843, François-Joseph-Lucien de Montagnac (1803-1845), then a battalion chief, expressed his view on this war: In a word, to annihilate all that does not crawl before us like dogs. In 1841, Alexis de Tocqueville, noted in his Work on Algeria: We wage war in a much more barbaric manner than the Arabs themselves and it is, at present, on their side that civilization is found. This lucid judgment may seem humanitarian. However, Tocqueville supported the conquest and believed that the destruction of crops, raids, and the capture of civilians could be justified by the necessities of war. The French conquest was accompanied by extensive destruction of agricultural resources, resulting famines, population displacements, and widespread land dispossession.
These practices can be compared to those employed against Native American populations during the territorial expansion of the United States, even though the two undertakings differ partly in their military tactics.
According to some demographic reconstructions, the conquest, population displacements, famines, and epidemics may have caused, between 1830 and the 1870s, an excess mortality approaching a quarter, or even, according to the highest estimates, a third of the indigenous Algerian population. However, due to a lack of reliable demographic data at the beginning of the conquest, this assessment remains uncertain and unverifiable.

Freedom, yes, but not that of the Commune!

While the so-called « civilizing mission » of France continued in Algeria, the Second Republic, born in 1848, was overthrown by the coup d’état of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (1808-1873) in December 1851, paving the way for the Second Empire in 1852. France was then experiencing rapid industrialization, while remaining predominantly rural. Napoleon III pursued an active foreign and colonial policy, notably allying with the United Kingdom during the Crimean War. The rivalry between France and Prussia over German unification led to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. After Napoleon III’s capitulation at Sedan, the Second Empire collapsed, but the war continued under the Republic until early 1871. The Paris Commune was born in March 1871 from defeat, peace conditions, social misery, fear of a monarchic restoration, and the government’s attempt to seize the cannons of the National Guard. A politically diverse movement, it notably defended communal autonomy and a social republic. The government of Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) crushed it with the army during the Semaine sanglante (Bloody Week). Thousands were killed, arrested, or sentenced, and several thousand communards were subsequently deported. The imposing Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur was built thanks to a large national subscription. Designed after the defeat of 1870 as a monument of religious expiation, the project took on a strong conservative and anti-commune significance by being located in Montmartre — where the Paris Commune began.
When political stability returned, the head of the future colossal statue destined for New York was unveiled to the public at the 1878 Paris World’s Fair, just seven years after the bloody repression of the Commune. The liberals and republicans who initiated the project primarily belonged to the bourgeois, intellectual, and political elites of the new Republic. Édouard de Laboulaye himself, the main inspirer of the statue, had condemned the Commune and approved its repression. Nevertheless, he defended ideas that were progressive at the time: an opponent of slavery, an admirer of Abraham Lincoln, and a supporter of American republican institutions, he envisioned freedom as an ordered constitutional framework, very different from the freedom of self-management championed by the communards.

Liberals of the Earth, unite!

All of this allows us to place in context the approach of the French liberals gathered around Édouard de Laboulaye. After supporting Lincoln and celebrating the victory of the Union and the abolition of slavery, they launched a French subscription to offer the Americans a statue symbolizing their shared love of « freedom », as they conceived it. This initiative is admirable. However, what I have recalled shows that liberals on both sides of the Atlantic shared a largely Eurocentric conception of freedom: grand and universalist in its principles, it often yielded, in its application, to the interests of its main proponents, whether European or Americans of European descent.
The Founding Fathers of American democracy managed to articulate values of immense fertility, but they were unable to apply them to all. Throughout the 19th century and into much of the 20th, American democracy evolved, often violently, toward greater freedom for an increasing portion of its population, while maintaining the dispossession and impoverishment of Native American nations and, after the abolition of slavery, segregation and the deprivation of rights for African Americans.

At the same time, France was also evolving, albeit with setbacks, toward greater freedom for its citizens, while denying colonized populations the equality it claimed to uphold, subjecting them to conquest, dispossession, and violence, in short, depriving them of many of their freedoms.

Should we turn the female Colossus of New-York towards the East (Fr.) or the West (US)?

Impressively, the admirable Founding Fathers of the American Republic identified the greatest threat to democracy: the rise of a demagogue to power. This has now happened in the United States, and the threat exists in France. In both countries, the same scapegoats are targeted: immigrants. Across the Atlantic, contrary to the country’s mission symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, those seeking refuge in the United States for economic or political reasons are hunted, mistreated, and confined in detention centers resembling concentration camps. In France, voters might elect a party irrealistically promising to close the country to immigration. As political violence escalates across the Atlantic and the American state fuels new conflicts, some Americans, disillusioned, seek more peace and quality of life in Europe, celebrating it on social media.
Twice, the American nation intervened in Europe to protect freedom, thereby safeguarding French democracy. In both instances, it acted too late to prevent the worst troubles and continued to deny dignity and freedom to its Black soldiers, who often received more respect from Europeans. Today, freedom is once again at risk on the old continent due to war, but also because elections, much like in the United States, could bring anti-immigrant demagogues to power. Millions are voting with their feet for Europe, fleeing the endless wars instigated by Americans in the Middle East. Meanwhile, some American elites claim that European civilization will crumble because of immigrants, while increasingly negotiating hard with Europeans over U.S. protection. It is becoming more difficult to discern where freedom has sought refuge. What should be done? Reorient the Statue of Liberty towards the American coast ?

In my opinion, it might be better to turn the statue towards the Greenlandic coast. In Greenland, the indigenous populations, long treated with little respect by their Danish colonizers, now enjoy significant freedom and are preparing for greater self-determination, even as American ambitions threaten to plunge them into a new colonialism. So, while we wait to be reassured about the future of freedom in France and its « sister republic » America, yes, let’s turn it towards Greenland! That’s what I would have said to the gentleman from the University of Florida if he had wanted to thank us for the Statue of Liberty.