Contesting a French Colonial Monument in Algiers and Paris by Jennifer Sessions

“Must the Duc d’Orléans Fall? Contesting a French Colonial Monument in Algiers and Paris.” by Dr. Jennifer Sessions, Associate Professor, University of Virginia

Anti-racist activists around the Atlantic World have mobilized in recent years to remove statues of colonial conquerors and defenders of slavery. The French have been suprisingly slow to join in the highly visible efforts spearheaded by movements like Rhodes Must Fall in South Africa and the UK and #TakeEmDownNOLA in the United States. Despite France’s long history of revolutionary iconoclasm, the collective calling itself #DéboulonsBugeaud (Take Down Bugeaud) has struggled to gain traction for the removal of monuments commemorating generals, politicians, and other figures involved in French imperialism. The history of the equestrian statue of Ferdinand-Philippe d’Orléans that was one of the iconic monuments of French Algeria helps to explain why. Conceived in Algiers and made in Paris in the 1840s, the statue stood in central Algiers throughout the colonial period. On the eve of Algerian independence in 1962, it was taken down and then “repatriated” to France, where it now stands in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Following the statue’s trans-Mediterranean voyages reveals the dense entanglement of local, national, and imperial meanings that have made it difficult to identify monuments as “colonial” in modern France.