“civilizing”—effects of French colonialism (Law For Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau the slave trade did
of February 25, 2005, Article 4). In response to this not qualify as a genocide, since it did not have as its
development, professional historians in France aim the destruction of slaves. Instead slaves were
organized into more or less activist associations seen and portrayed as economic goods represented
opposed to the abusive use of history and memory merely in terms of commercial value. He insisted
or in favor of free historical inquiry and opposed on demonstrating that the Shoah and slave trade
to state interference in academic study. The were very different processes. A thousand historians
French also called upon the international history signed the petition, which became the founding
profession for support in the form of a petition act of the “Liberté pour l’histoire” Association,
drafted by a number of historians at a meeting at presided over by René Rémond until his death
Sciences Po on December 10, 2005, in response to and subsequently succeeded by Pierre Nora. As
the lawsuit filed against French historian Olivier Nora explained it, the aim of amassing historian
Pétré-Grenouilleau, who, in his book on the African signatories, was to “recall that history is neither a
slave trade, refused to call it genocide. This is the religion or a type of morality; that it cannot be a slave
problem of the Taubira’s lawsuit which considered to current events or be written as memory would
the slave trade of Africans by Europeans to be dictate; that state policy is not history’s policy”
a crime against humanity and by this way have (Pierre Nora and Françoise Chandernagor, Liberté
included the comparison with Shoah phenomena. pour l’histoire, Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2008, p. 7).
Lyon Armenian Genocide Memorial was erected in 2006 in central Lyon, France. It was designed by Leonardo Basmadyian and includes 36 white concrete pieces
supported by stones from Armenia. Poems of Kostan Zarian are written on the concrete pieces | EUROM
EUROPE INSIGHT
37