A12 N THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALTHURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2020
BORDEAUX, France — At a
bend in the river, a succession of
stately stone buildings, each more
imposing than the last, stretches
along the left bank. Their elegant
18th-century facades had helped
Bordeaux, already famous for its
wineries, become a UNESCO
World Heritage site.
“This facade, it’s a monumental
and extraordinary heritage — and
a sort of stage metaphor,” said
Laurent Védrine, director of the
Museum of Aquitaine. “Let’s go
look behind the stone facade:
Where did this wealth come
from?”
Bordeaux, unlike much of
France, began digging into that
question more than a decade ago.
It found that its grand buildings
had been financed, in part, by the
slave trade. Slavery touched on its
monuments and its architecture.
So the city began to address the
past, but instead of tearing down
the telltales of its ugly history, it
has put up plaques to acknowl-
edge and explain it.
Other European cities with sim-
ilar histories have preferred to re-
main silent. But the killing of
George Floyd by a police officer in
Minneapolis has now widened
and invigorated the debate over
Europe’s long, brutal and lucra-
tive history in Africa, punctuated
by the recent toppling of statues of
colonial-era figures.
In France, a long history of slav-
ery and colonialism has been
eclipsed by a national narrative
and self-identity as the revolution-
ary champion of universal human
rights.
But France’s colonialist past is a
subject as sensitive as slavery is
in the United States. Behind the
refined facade of much of Europe,
the world’s most-visited tourist
region, lies wealth that was gener-
ated by the trans-Atlantic slave
trade and the subsequent coloni-
zation of the African continent.
Six decades after most African
nations gained independence,
there has been no complete com-
ing to terms with that history, ei-
ther in Europe or in Africa. Caught
in the silence are people of African
origin in Europe, where enduring
racism, near-hysterical fear over
migration and the failure to inte-
grate generations of immigrants
cannot be separated from that un-
resolved past.
“It’s the inability to shed light
on that past that maintains the
racism and the impunity of the po-
lice, or the impunity of those who
make decisions, in employment or
in housing, based on physical cri-
teria and deny the rights of
French people who are black or
Arab,” said Karfa Diallo, the Sene-
galese-born founder of Mémoires
et Partages, an organization that
has pushed the city of Bordeaux to
fully acknowledge its history. “It’s
never said as clearly as that, but
that’s the heart of the matter.”
As researchers dug deeper into
Bordeaux — past the sculpted Af-
rican faces looking down from a
building in the Place de la Bourse
— they found logbooks, records,
paintings, all showing that the
French city in the interior, at a
bend in the Garonne, had flour-
ished because of commerce based
on the enslavement of human be-
ings.
Local men had made fortunes
sending ships to Africa, where the
French bartered goods for people,
who were then taken across the
Atlantic to Caribbean colonies.
There, they were sold and forced
to labor on plantations, producing
goods that were finally brought to
Bordeaux’s port and sold in Eu-
rope.
In 2009, the Museum of
Aquitaine established a perma-
nent exhibition detailing Bor-
deaux’s role in France’s slavery-
based commerce. From 1672 to
1837, 180 shipowners in Bordeaux
led 480 expeditions that trans-
ported as many as 150,000 Afri-
cans to France’s Caribbean colo-
nies, making Bordeaux the most
important French slave-trading
port after Nantes.
The city government has physi-
cally acknowledged that history,
starting in 2006 with a modest
plaque on a dock along the river to
commemorate the history of slav-
ery. Over the years, the reminders
have grown more prominent andmoved closer to where people live.
Last year, the statue of Modeste
Testas, an enslaved woman
bought by two Bordeaux brothers,
was erected on the riverbank.
This month, the city installed
plaques on five residential streets
named after prominent local men
who were involved in the trans-At-
lantic slave trade. One plaque,
placed on the wall of a one-story
house on Gramont Street, ex-
plained that Jacques-Barthélémy
Gramont, a former mayor of Bor-
deaux, financed a slave-trading
expedition in 1783 and two more in
1803.
Marik Fetouh, a deputy mayor,
said that the city had always be-
lieved that the past must be re-
membered and explained, in con-
trast to a growing number of peo-
ple pushing to tear down statues
in Europe and the United States.
“Getting rid of statues won’t
erase horrible crimes that have
been committed,” Mr. Fetouh said.
“Not only do you not change his-
tory, but you also deprive yourself
of ways of explaining it.”But Mr. Diallo said that Bor-
deaux — and France — should do
more, especially in light of the an-
ger stirred by Mr. Floyd’s killing.
Mr. Diallo said that while he found
the possibility of financial repara-
tions politically unrealistic, he be-
lieved the idea was morally just:
When France abolished slavery in
1848, it compensated enslavers for
their financial loss. Far short of
that, he says, he’d like to see one
street in the city renamed entirely
as a “strong symbol.”
Mr. Fetouh said that changing
street names makes residents an-
gry and would make the popula-
tion less open to look at the past.
But around Europe there is less
sentiment in favor of preserving
the status quo.
After Mr. Floyd’s killing, a
crowd in Bristol, England, toppled
a statue of the 17th-century slave
trader Edward Colston. In Ant-
werp, Belgium, the local authori-
ties, responding to increasing pro-
tests, removed a statue of Leopold
II, the Belgian king who ran an ex-
ploitative regime that led to the
deaths of millions in what is now
the Democratic Republic of Congo
and whose ambitions set off Eu-
rope’s scramble for African colo-
nies.
In the United States, protesters
first focused on Confederate mon-
uments. But they have since cast a
wider eye, including at former
presidents like Andrew Jackson, a
slave owner whose policies forced
Native Americans from their land,
and Woodrow Wilson, the archi-
tect of the League of Nations
whose legacy has faced increas-
ing scrutiny for his racist views
and his resegregation of the fed-eral work force.
In France, many protesters fo-
cused on Jean-Baptiste Colbert,
the 17th-century statesman who is
still celebrated for his lasting im-
pact on France’s political econ-
omy, but who was also the author
of the Code Noir, the 1685 decree
regulating slavery in the colonies.
On Tuesday, a protester splattered
red paint on a statue of Colbert in
front of the National Assembly
and wrote “state Negrophobia” on
its pedestal.
Jean-Marc Ayrault, a former
prime minister who is now presi-
dent of the Foundation for theMemory of Slavery, urged the gov-
ernment to remove Colbert’s
name from important halls and
buildings. The idea was quickly
shot down, led by President Em-
manuel Macron, who said during
a national address that France
“will not erase any trace or name
from its history. The republic will
not take down any statues.”
But France — whose diplomatic
power rests greatly on the influ-
ence it still exerts over its former
African colonies — has struggled
more than other European na-
tions to come to terms with its im-
perial past.
Achille Mbembe, a Camer-
oonian expert on post-colonial his-tory and France, said that those
efforts were complicated by
France’s self-understanding as a
nation and as a proponent of uni-
versal values like equality and lib-
erty.
“There aren’t that many coun-
tries in the world which believe
profoundly that they are invested
with a universal mission,” said Mr.
Mbembe, who teaches at the Uni-
versity of Witwatersrand in Jo-
hannesburg. “The U.S. is one of
them, and France is the other.”
“It is the idea of a universal
which is premised on the concept
that there is one human race,” he
added. “But the French confuse
the horizon with the existing reali-
ty. There’s a huge gap.”
The gap was easy to ignore be-
cause slave-trading and colonial-
ism were carried out well beyond
France’s main territory in Europe,
Mr. Mbembe said, adding, “It was
always a kind of offshore enter-
prise.”
Even in France’s far-flung cor-
ners, coming to terms with the
past has been a slow process.
In French Guiana — an over-
seas department on the north
coast of South America that
France established in the 17th cen-
tury with enslaved Africans — the
main airport was long named “Ro-
chambeau” after the father of a
French general who used dogs to
suppress a slave uprising in Haiti
and encouraged feeding the dogs
with human flesh.
Christiane Taubira — a law-
maker who was the driving force
behind a 2001 French law that rec-
ognized the slave trade and slav-
ery as crimes against humanity,
and the first black woman named
justice minister in France — be-
gan pressing to change the air-
port’s name in the early 2000s.
“There was so much resistance
— from historians, politicians and
even the people — that I was
ready to hand over the fight to the
next generation,” Ms. Taubira said
by phone from French Guiana, her
voice rising above the din of a
tropical rainstorm. “But after nine
years of battle, we won.”
In 2012, the airport was re-
named after Félix Éboué, a de-
scendant of enslaved people who
in 1936 was appointed the gover-
nor of Guadeloupe, then a French
colony in the Caribbean.
The enduring ties between
France and its former colonies
also continue to shape the per-
spective of Francophone Africans,
generations after independence.
Poor, young African migrants
keep risking their lives to cross
the Sahara and the Mediterra-
nean, homing in on France and its
vague, though talismanic, pull.
The elite keep apartments in
Paris and send their children to
schools there.
Mr. Diallo, the Senegalese-born
activist in Bordeaux, left Africa a
quarter-century ago as a young
man imbued with the words of
Léopold Senghor and Aimé Cé-
saire. In France, he built a life at
the bend in the river, making its
town his, too.
“The desire for Europe is
stronger than the desire for Afri-
ca,” Mr. Diallo said. “Even in us,
it’s not at all absent. We came to
study here and finally we stayed.
We became French.”Floyd’s Death Forces a Deeper Debate on France’s Slave-Trading Past
The Place de la Bourse is a symbol of the prosperity of Bordeaux,
which flourished because of the slave trade. Karfa Diallo says the
city — and France — should do more to acknowledge that past.PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREA MANTOVANI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESBy NORIMITSU ONISHIPlaques and a statue
mark Bordeaux’s role
in the slave trade.
President Trump welcomed
President Andrzej Duda of Poland
to the White House on Wednes-
day, his first meeting with a for-
eign leader since February and
one that Democrats called an un-
seemly effort to boost a European
ally whose country is tilting to-
ward autocracy days before a
close re-election vote.
Mr. Duda, who has served as
Poland’s president since 2015, has
presided over political restric-
tions on Poland’s judiciary, media
and civil society while becoming
one of Mr. Trump’s preferred for-
eign partners. The Polish election
is on Sunday, a fact Mr. Trump
made no effort to gloss over.
“I do believe he has an election
coming up, and I do believe he will
be successful,” Mr. Trump said of
Mr. Duda during a news confer-
ence the men held in the Rose Gar-
den.
Pressed on whether he was
seeking to tip the scales in the Pol-
ish election, Mr. Trump deflected
the question.
“He’s doing a terrific job. The
people of Poland think the world of
him,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t
think he needs my help.”
But it is clear that Mr. Trump
would be happy to see Mr. Duda
retain power. The two leaders
have met one on one at least five
times, including three times at the
White House. Two years ago Mr.
Duda hosted the president in War-
saw, where Mr. Trump delivered a
speech calling for nationalist,
anti-immigration policies world-
wide. Mr. Duda has even offered to
host a “Fort Trump” that would
house U.S. troops in his country.
His visit had no clear official
purpose, analysts said, and
amounted to a photo opportunity
for a populist leader whom polls
show with just 40 percent support
heading into an election that re-
quires a majority to avoid a runoff.
“This was really an endorse-
ment masquerading as a meet-
ing,” said Molly Montgomery, a
former career diplomat and a non-
resident fellow at the Brookings
Institution. Ms. Montgomery
noted that Mr. Trump “didn’t even
try to hide or gloss over the elec-
tion piece here.”
Mr. Trump has not met in Wash-
ington with a top foreign official
since February, when he hosted
Venezuela’s opposition leader,
Juan Guaidó, whom the U.S. rec-
ognizes as the country’s rightful
president.
He tried without success to
coax several heads of state to a
Group of 7 summit in the Washing-
ton area this month, an event he
said would signal a “return to nor-
malcy.” But Chancellor Angela
Merkel of Germany quashed the
idea in a statement saying the co-
ronavirus made such a gathering
unsafe.
For Mr. Duda, the political bene-
fits clearly outweighed any risk of
travel, even if his visit violated a
longstanding American political
norm.
“There is a good rule in U.S. di-
plomacy where you don’t do that,”
said Daniel Fried, a retired career
diplomat who served as the U.S.
ambassador to Poland in the Clin-
ton administration. “Trump does-
n’t much care about those things,
but the reason you don’t do it is be-
cause it injects the U.S. into the do-
mestic politics of another country,
and it alienates a whole bunch of
people there’s no reason to alien-
ate.”The leaders said they discussed
a range of issues, including efforts
against the coronavirus, Poland’s
purchase of liquid natural gas
from the United States and Ameri-
can assistance for Poland’s civil
nuclear program.
“I don’t think we’ve ever been
closer to Poland than right now,”
Mr. Trump said in brief remarks to
reporters in the Oval Office. “I
have a very good personal rela-
tionship with the president.”
The men also discussed Ameri-
can troop levels in Poland, which
could rise if Mr. Trump follows
through on his stated plans to
withdraw 9,500 U.S. troops from
Germany, capping America’s per-
manent presence there at 25,
troops.
Many officials in Poland are
hopeful that Mr. Trump will relo-
cate some of those troops to their
country, which now hosts some
4,500 American service memberson a rotating basis.
But Trump officials say no such
plans have been set. Writing in
The Wall Street Journal last week,
Mr. Trump’s national security ad-
viser, Robert C. O’Brien, said mili-
tary officials were still drawing up
options for the president.
“We’re going to be reducing our
forces in Germany,” Mr. Trump
said. “Some will be coming home
and some will be going to other
places — but Poland would be one
of those other places, other places
in Europe.”
If more American troops do go
to Poland, they are unlikely to be
housed at a site named after Mr.
Trump. Last year, Poland pro-
posed spending some $2 billion to
build a new base informally desig-
nated as Fort Trump to host thou-
sands of American troops. Those
plans fell through, but the United
States did agree to send 1,
more troops to the country.Mr. Duda said on Wednesday
that he had asked Mr. Trump to re-
locate some of the troops into his
country and warned that major
American withdrawals from the
continent “would be very detri-
mental to European security.”
But European leaders are con-
cerned about what Mr. Trump
might do. In his new book, Mr.
Trump’s former national security
adviser, John R. Bolton, confirmed
reports that Mr. Trump had con-
sidered withdrawing from NATO
altogether.
Several prominent Democrats
criticized the visit before Mr. Du-
da’s arrival. Representative
Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who is Pol-
ish-American, called on Mr.
Trump to cancel the meeting, cit-
ing in a statement his “inappropri-
ate efforts to insert himself into
Polish domestic politics and boost
President Duda’s re-election with
a White House visit.”Former Secretary of State
Madeleine K. Albright, who
helped to expand the NATO alli-
ance into Eastern Europe the
1990s, also criticized the visit.
“I was proud to welcome a dem-
ocratic Poland into NATO, and I
am very concerned by the extent
to which the current Polish gov-
erning party has retreated from
the values at the heart of the alli-
ance,” she said in a statement.
“The United States should be
standing up for those values,
rather than rewarding President
Duda with a White House visit
days before the election.”
Ms. Kaptur and others also crit-
icized Mr. Duda for running a so-
cially conservative campaign that
speaks of “L.G.B.T. ideology” and
has compared gay rights activists
to communist revolutionaries.
“President Duda and his party
promote horrifying homophobic
and anti-L.G.B.T.Q. stereotypes
and policies that run counter to
the human rights and values that
America should strive to uphold,”
Representative Eliot L. Engel, the
chairman of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, said in a state-
ment last week.
Mr. Fried said that Mr. Duda
was not the driving force behind
his country’s recent authoritarian
measures.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Duda also
found unlikely common cause
over recent efforts by anti-racism
protesters in the United States to
deface and topple federal statues
and monuments, which Mr.
Trump says he will make a crime
punishable by 10 years in prison
through an executive order. Mr.
Duda lamented that during dem-
onstrations near the White House
this month, protesters defaced a
statue in Lafayette Square of the
Polish general Tadeusz Kosciusz-
ko, who fought on the American
side of the Revolutionary War.
“For completely incomprehen-
sible reasons to us, that monu-
ment was devastated,” he said,
adding that it had since been re-
stored.President Andrzej Duda of Poland with President Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday.ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMESPoland’s President Gets
A Boost From Trump
By MICHAEL CROWLEYMarc Santora contributed report-
ing.