In 1910, Austria-Hungary to the United States, the United Kingdom to France, the West digests the less its first military defeat that is just beginning to really appreciate the consequences the Russo-Japanese War - it took place in 1904-1905 and ended with the victory of imperial Japan, which has appropriated Korea, the region of Port Arthur (China's port city) and a Sakhalin Island [1], off Siberia, when Imperial Russia was forced to evacuate Manchuria and return to South China - and concern So best of "Yellow Peril" [2], born towards the last third of the nineteenth th century as a fantasy "white" unfortunate to Gobineau, that is to say, without hope never reverse the "movement" of rise of non-white peoples, and suddenly became "reality" geo-politics ...
After the wave of industrial capitalism and its bubbling financial flows outweigh almost everything (symbols, values , feelings, boundaries, "naturalness" ...) in their path, a second traumatic encounter with the unrepresentable : here and there, "too many". unrepresentable all the more threatening he stands on the merits of this concept and viscous recent invention, the "race", which claims to fix cultures and behaviors in the body, preventing any hope of composition, better, assimilation.
Louis Bertrand, it is more or less in tune with the widespread fear but attention has turned to another horizon: the Levant. That year, the future academician - he will succeed Maurice Barres in 1925 - issued in the Academic Library Perrin Mirage East , travelogue, and essay "Ethno-historical" fed what he "saw" during a long trip in part Mediterranean is under the domination of a Turk considered decades as "the sick man of Europe" by British diplomacy, opening the way for the brothers Tharaud, for example, tireless travelers, chroniclers of Central Europe and the Middle East [3].
far from our current European delicacies tired, jaded and wearily resigned under the guise of "tolerance" and "multi-culturalism," that Louis Bertrand "sees" it does not just report it: he says he and the judge. Without complex. With the seriousness of a reactionary Normale; condescension of a quiet middle-class Republican and Dreyfus, who became Catholic by a strong belief that probably has more to do with the "Civilization" with the concern for personal salvation, ie with faith, assumed the megalomania of a Westerner visiting their "lesser brethren," especially those who have seen the "Light", the real curiosity of an amateur anthropologist supports informed lantern (though dull) of his family - who still mourn the Alsace-Lorraine [4] while intoxicated Belle Epoque, concerned about a safe distance without being really accountable only steps Europe as the impatient restless, whose good will and good manners are all but acquired ...
And Louis Bertrand, that inspired his paranoia has made particularly perceptive regarding the future of Algeria ( but also of "Islam") where he has nevertheless spent a decade in the late nineteenth e century - not without leaving lasting traces (see, in this space, the sun Written 3 online since August 23, 2010) - offers us, in the guise of a review of "facts" a rather remarkable detail of some of the prejudices about subjects of the Ottoman Empire - or representations to speak like the geo-politicians today - in circulation in France of our doulce while among those who he came to bring the gaze to the near East. Amazing mix of prescience and disdain class, inflated self-esteem, even snobbery, and, in places, finesse analysis, non-racist racialism, "sensitivity" ethno-sociological and modernity, in its case against the commodification of tourism and the growth of the tour on which s' opens the book.
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Excerpts:
II
A PSYCHOLOGICAL SKETCH
If Christians and Jews are the real intellectual elite of the East, it is also undeniable that they are paying dearly for the ransom of their superiority. It is not only their countrymen [?] Muslims are perhaps even more Westerners who demonstrate their antipathy more or less declared.
From the first glance, these Levantine us [!] By a shocking lack of dignity, a mixture of platitude and insolence, an obsequiousness that nothing tired. Such is the soul of the slave: cynical, intemperate in sycophancy as in insult, he pursued his idea with incredible tenacity, he can be enormously voluntary while disguising his will. Whether a lady or Syrian Greek, which resolved to force the doors of this European event particularly difficult to access, or a store clerk who wants to insinuate his merchandise, stubbornness is like . If they have vowed to make you capitulate, they will succeed at any cost, they will, as they say, your skin. If this is not what will be strong, if not by flattery, it will be by the importunity even [sic] through intimidation. As long as we resist, we feel them in sullen irritation, anger that rails against the barrier, which soon becomes exasperated to frenzy. They end up getting stung in the game, and any interest apart by hell-bent on victory, even disastrous, for the sake of defeating [5]. This is their enjoyment of opposing bend the will: But the sly cunning slave whose constant lookout strives to get the master [6] precisely the path where he stumbles and snorted like best!
I see yet the fury of a committed Armenian, the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul, had bet with his friends to sell me one of her embroidery. I surprised her winks: First, I would not hear anything, then exceeded its proceedings, I proposed the subject - which I did not want - a very low price, a price ridiculous. The Armenian persisted to roll me, multiplied passes and melee to force me to make landfall. It was a dazzling and endless fencing. Beneath its polished formulas, I felt her rage to face this incredible phenomenon: a traveler who refuses to let it go! I stiffened with all my strength, I kept on. In desperation, he accepted my price and put me in hand embroidery, preferring to sell at a loss [!] Than yield to the obstinacy of a European. He was always very polite but he was smoking the funny! and I think, had he dared, he would have beaten.
This firmness that hides under the relaxation of dress, lack of dignity that comes with commercial and diplomatic trick, but it fits perfectly with the spirit and practice of highly positive Levantine. This is because it is convenient, it ignores or disdains our refinements in Western morality. He feels very good and he excels in making us feel that the delicacies we pride ourselves, are almost always challenges that naive common sense. Not that he himself is incapable of delicacy, he has a point of honor, or even heroism. Only this delicacy, this point of honor and heroism are very different from ours ...
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III
The displeasure of the Jew
This general outline is equally suitable for people of low class Levantine as those of the upper classes. I would now like to examine more closely the subjects of the elite, and in trying to characterize them in their most interesting for us to pass alternately under the eyes of the reader, the Young-Jew The Young and the Young-Syrian-Hellenic ...
Let us note first: the condition of the Israelites in the East is still very miserable, and often even lower than that, if precarious, the Muslim mob. In material terms, as the moral point of view, they are still very backward. It should therefore be judged in any leniency to those of them who try to get out of this semi-barbarous, and - regardless of the displeasure of their flaws - who frankly are turning to European civilization and pride themselves on their walk with us.
It would be wrong if we formed an idea of the Oriental Jews from those found in Turkey, especially from those of Salonica, which represent a real aristocracy among their other co-religionists. These are educated, raised to the French or German, very anxious to cultivate and improve their lot. The results of their efforts are already evident in a striking manner. The Young Israel coming out of schools are no different from Salonika Young Hellenes-traders, bankers and traders. Careful of their dress, active, eager and skilled multilingual speakers, they even out, same pace, almost the same face [!] Than their rivals. The only detail that reveals their origin, the discreet use of Castilian, the language that their ancestors were brought from Spain and who remained, somehow, their national idiom [7] .
But this transformation is of recent date. It goes back no more than a generation. Just look at fathers and grandfathers of these young people to realize it. Dressed in a suit hybrid, semi-European, semi-oriental, dirty, looking grim, the mine cautious and frightened, they provide unequivocal stigma from their long slavery ...
continued ...
Notes:
[1] Sakhalin will be annexed by Stalin in August 1945 and attached to the USSR; Today the island is still a matter of dispute between Japan and Russia ...
[2] Headline of the Russian sociologist, Francophone, Francophile, and Anglophobe feminist Novicow Jacques (1849-1912 ), The Yellow Peril , published in the International Journal of Sociology (Grade 5, February 1897, pp. 351 ff.), A reprint was published by Editions V. Giard & E. Briere, Paris, 1897. I owe to the erudition of Pierre-Andre Taguieff this reference, and the following clarification: " In The Future of White (Paris, Alcan, 1897), devotes several Novicow developments, more substantial the 'yellow peril' " .
[3] Jean Tharaud will, in 1946, after Louis Bertrand at the French Academy, where his brother Jerome was elected in 1938 (see, for example, In the Shadow of the Cross (1920), repr. Paris, The Tree of Judea / Les Belles Lettres, 2001, and Next year in Jerusalem (1930), repr. Paris, The Tree of Judea / Les Belles Lettres, 1999).
[4] For the record: in 1913, Jacques Novicow will publish a book entitled Alsace-Lorraine, an obstacle to German expansion According to Wikipedia ... .
[5] This picturesque generalization of L. Bertrand has the merit of reminding us that, under the peaceful exchange commodity-money, there not just "the icy water of egotistical calculation" of the Communist Manifesto , that economic agents playing game set but also the updating of a local ephemeral human community, including the satisfaction of hypothetical 'needs "is the pretext; output of anonymity that came into the living word and in a game can become art, that of haggling, a struggle between individuals , wills doomed to assertiveness and here -now, admittedly, but under the obligation to maintain social ties - again more effective, of course, when it is not the custom but the prevailing rule of law - that is to say to keep civility, however painful that may be. In other words, to preserve the possibility of another coup, which is the true purpose of the exchange. It also says that the word "trade".
[6] Here, it might appear surprising from the pen of a highly nationalistic L. Bertrand couple famous master-slave, who did know of true notoriety in France until the 1930s, especially in Marxist circles, and that comes directly from Chapter IV Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel (1770-1831), author translated since 1867 but little read, let alone reviewed, when The Mirage seems East "[considered] the incarnation [... ] of pan-Germanism, Hegel [...] is the victim of two conflicting nationalisms - German and French - the conflict exacerbated by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 "(VY Mudimbe & A. Bohm, Hegel's Reception in France, Duke University & Carleton University, 1992, p. 8). It is true that the couple had already been circulated fraudulent by the pan-Germanic having (mis) read Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals through their glasses supremacists ...
Anyway, in L. Bertrand, no death Hegelian enjoyment and birth forced to work for "slave" who did not ultimately dared risk his life, so his freedom in the fight to the death that was opposite to that which has not hesitated him to do - becoming "master" by it; just defeated an unequal battle that has played before him. No definitive inferiority. No pseudo-Nietzschean heroism either: the "slave" does not say "no" but "maybe" - a survival instinct refined.
The "slave" of Louis Bertrand, away from the peaks, is the prudent and crafty Scapin, never ceasing to reflect a balance of power which is often biased, but never let pass an opportunity to avenge as long as he can do so by escaping the consequences of the weak force ....
He holds Scapin but Don Juan, the Satanic aristocrat whose true enjoyment is not to "eat" - that, Casanova is the case, to impecunious adventurer complex - but to get through persuasion by words formidable women he met by chance and by game companies to reject their own vows, renounce their faith, and not to succumb to his request as well as their desire - that is not admirable beggar Molière, first and foremost concerned about his salvation, refusing to pay gold coin of blasphemy - and without excuse, with that. Weak strong.
This "slave", it is clear that L. Bertrand did not consider it but it does not say he is definitely hostile in any case, it amuses him and he sees a clear future. Remains to be called "slave" a Levantine-type, a clerk Armenian paradigmatic, he helped make easier the semantic shifts and amalgams of anyone who would take a "master" ...
[7] Under the apparent equivalence of the terms "Jew" and "Jew", it is clear that one refers to the "archaic" one in "modern", quite in keeping with the spirit "Informed" of the time, when the Israelites French and German (eg Reinach brothers, brothers Darmesteter, Baron de Hirsch), integrated, enlightened, universalist, patriots and supporters of the Reform Jews (who prefers " spirit "of the Law of Moses as translated by the prophets to his" letter ", as worked by the Talmud) take great care to distinguish themselves, including their appearance, Jews, particularistic, traditionalists, attached to the Talmud and Whereas still in exile.
It should also be noted that in this opposition, plays also a class difference: the Israelites are essentially bourgeois and intellectuals who conquered, not without difficulty, a place to in their respective societies, when the Jews, the vast majority are artisans rather , shopkeepers, laborers, and for many of them, "aliens" from the poor eastern Europe - to escape the pogroms and / or poverty ... On all these points, see Abraham H. Navon, Joseph Perez (1925), repr. Paris, The Tree of Judea / Les Belles Lettres, 1999 and Jacob Levy, Saga of Springer (1925-1928), repr. Paris, The Tree of Judea / Les Belles Lettres, 1999.
And we notice that the issue National Jewish is the turning of a phrase innocent.
East ... [1] © Copyright 2011 Richard Zrehen
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