Paris connections

I left Paris a few hours before Pope Leo XIV paid his first official visit to the French capital. Paris is a welcoming city which takes in its stride eruptions of global personalities and leaders. I saw only one poster announcing the pope’s visit and expected traffic jams as the Catholic faithful and members of other faiths flowed into the city to swell the numbers of those who lined the route along Paris’ iconic Champs-Élysées Avenue, seen as a sign of the Church’s long-lasting appeal in the firmly Catholic but officially secular country. Mass celebrated by the US-born pope at Place de la Concorde in the centre of the city was attended by about 800,000 people. The pope told his congregation that “none of us is merely a number or an entry in a register but a unique and irreplaceable person,” before God.

It is ironic that the mass was held at the site of one of the guillotines that beheaded more than 1,000 people during the French Revolution, 1779-1789, including King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette. The Revolution was followed by a period of turmoil until the brilliant Corsican general Napoleon Bonaparte seized power, waged wars across Europe, declared an empire, and instituted a series of reforms which contributed to the rise of the nation state. He remains highly respected and revered in France.

The Napoleonic Code granted equal civil rights and equality before the law for all male citizens, and abolished feudalism and privileges enjoyed by the nobility. The code ensured freedom of conscience, separated civil law from church control, protected private property rights and simplified business contracts, and enhanced the authority of husbands and fathers within households while limiting legal rights for married women.

While in Paris, I toured with friends the sewers and visited the graveyard where French and other literary figures are buried, but even though we had a map of the vast cemetery, we did not find the graves we sought to see. I wanted to pay respects to the author Colette, who is famous in the English-speaking world for her 1944 novella “Gigi,” which was the basis for the charming 1958 film starring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, and Louis Jourdan. Set in 1900, Gigi is a teen being coached to be a courtesan who refuses to assume this role and captivates and marries playboy Jourdan.

Paris is called the “City of Light,” (or la Ville Lumière) for both its history of early street lighting and its role during the 17th and 18th century Age of Enlightenment, when Paris was a major intellectual hub. Thinkers, philosophers, and writers gathered here to spread ideas of science, reason, and education. Among the most famous among the French were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, who elucidated their ideas at the salons of Paris. The salons were also attended by American inventor and philosopher Benjamin Franklin, who arrived in Paris in 1778 as a diplomat and was considered by Parisian intellectuals as the embodiment of Enlightenment ideals. Thomas Jefferson, the revolutionary who wrote the US Declaration of Independence from Britain and became third US president, was the American minister to France from 1784 to 1789 and frequently met Parisian philosophers.

On the political front, France and the US have long cultivated close relations despite occasional spats and differences. In 1778, France became the first and decisive ally of the 13 British colonies during the American Revolutionary War. France remained officially neutral throughout the US Civil War and did not recognise the breakaway Confederate States of America. The US government warned that any foreign recognition of the Confederacy would be treated as an act of war. This deterred Britain and France, which were involved in the trade in cotton and were reluctant to break with the Confederate states.

The US became involved in World War I after declaring war with Germany on April 6, 1917. This ended nearly three years of American neutrality, and the country’s involvement in the conflict lasted over nineteen months before a ceasefire and armistice were declared on Nov. 11, 1918. The US mobilised five million men and provided supplies, raw material, and money to Britain, France, and other Allied powers.

The US remained neutral again when World War II began in Europe in 1939, due to American isolationism. Nevertheless, in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt supplied war materiel to Britain, China, and the Soviet Union without entering the fighting. The US entered the war in late 1941 after Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, marshalled its forces, and joined the European theatre of war on June 6, 1944, by launching Operation Overlord, the largest seaborne invasion in history, aimed at liberating Nazi-occupied Western Europe. After the war ended, the US helped Europe to recover through the Marshall Plan, which provided $13.3 billion ($150 billion today) to 16 Western European countries, delivering necessities including food, fuel, machinery and helped restore the manufacturing sector. This created a strong emotional as well as material bond between France and the US.

Photo: TNS