Francophilia: Case of Armenia Julie Oddon

Francophilia: Case of Armenia Julie Oddon To cite this version: Julie Oddon. Francophilia: Case of Armenia. AMBERD Bulletin, Armenian State University of Economics, 2020, pp.82-91. hal-03318710v2 HAL Id: hal-03318710 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03318710v2 Submitted on 20 Sep 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. ARMENIA AND WORLD FRANCOPHILIA: CASE OF ARMENIA Keywords: francophilia, diaspora, soft power, language, OIF Julie There are already a lot of papers about Francophil- ODDON ia. Nevertheless, most of them involve African countries or French speaking countries. Studying Francophilia in Student in Sciences Po Lyon, France Armenia brings a new angle to the movement since it is an underlying and entrenched concept in the countries Third year student at Sciences Po that do not speak French. So, we decided to study the Lyon, France (Political Science). In- ternship at AMBERD weight of the French language in Armenia. The goal Research Center of Armenian was to find explanations of this Francophile movement State University of Economics, Yere- by understanding its roots, actors and dynamics. It is van, Armenia (February – June, 2020). Exchange student at High- through readings and interviews that we collected our er School of Economics (Russian information to write this paper. The main and most ob- and International Relations), vious reason why French is so popular is partly due to Moscow, Russia (September – De- cember, 2019). Internship at Fir- the French policies and soft power throughout the world menich, Neuilly-sur-Seine, and as such also in Armenia. We acknowledge that we France (June-July 2018). miss diverse sources to make this paper more relevant. What would be important to understand after this is how the vision of Francophilia is biased and only based on France whereas it covers numerous and diverse pop- ulations. ntroduction I The distance between France and Armenia is 3497 kilometers. No more than a person out of ten has no- tions of French in Armenia, and according to a study from the International Organization for Francophonie, there are 0,3% francophones out of 2,9 million Armenians1. Then, how can we explain the Francophile movement? We decid- 1 From the report of the Linguistic Observatory of the French Language, page 96. https://www.francophonie.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/ Edition%202019%20La%20langue%20francaise%20dans%20le%20 monde_VF%202020%20.pdf 82 2020/ 3. ed to work on Francophilia and how it is a ment. First of all, this essay will focus on his- ԱՄԲԵՐԴ ՏԵՂԵԿԱԳԻՐ . AMBERD BULLETIN . АМБЕРД БЮЛЛЕТЕНЬ . AMBERD BULLETIN . АМБЕРД ԱՄԲԵՐԴ ՏԵՂԵԿԱԳԻՐ French soft power tool and to precisely study toric and deep ties of Armenia and France. this in Armenia. In Armenia, French is not These ties are political, cultural and econom- an official language and as the figures show ic and are such for centuries. Then, we will it is not a predominant language either. Nev- examine the Armenian diaspora in France ertheless, ties between the two countries are which helps keeping relationships between really deep and mostly unknown that is why the two nations. Another explanation for this we considered it interesting. Thus, through interest in the French language is the French this paper, we hope we can shed light not soft power; indeed, France has an import- only on their relations but also on the Ar- ant cultural diplomacy around the world, in- menian Francophile movement by focusing cluding Armenia. Finally, we will mention the on the Armenian interest in the French lan- Armenian membership of the International guage. Organization for Francophonie and how this Francophilia concerns foreigners and fact contributes to the enhancement of the their interests for the French nation, its Armenian Francophilia. culture and values. With not confusing with As far as the method used is concerned, I Francophonie, which is the quality of speak- first tried to read as much as possible about ing French, it also includes all the people, what Francophonie and Francophilia meant, institutions and governments that use French indeed the goal was to grasp the key con- on a daily basis, either as an administrative cepts. There are a lot of research papers, language, teaching one or a chosen one. books and reviews about Francophonie, its The word was invented by Onésime Reclus, objectives, what it represents for France. a French geographer at the end of the XIX For instance, Philippe Lane4 wrote about the century. This represents France, Belgium, French presence across the world explain- Switzerland but also twenty-six countries ing its roots, goals, the policies put in place. in Africa such as Congo, Madagascar and Most of the time, these papers illustrate their Rwanda. Francophonie is for France a diplo- statements with African French speaking matic tool part of its soft power. Soft Power countries. Indeed, Africa is the continent 30 is defining it as the “use of positive attrac- with the most French speaking people. Also, tion and persuasion to achieve foreign policy this region is a priority for Francophonie. objectives”. Soft Power 30 is a ranking made The following step was to link it with Arme- every year by the strategic firm Portland and nia. For doing that, I looked for papers and the university of South Carolina; they ranked books about the history, about the diaspora France first in 20172 and 20193. and about the relations between France and The love for French in Armenia is a fact. Armenia. Finding data about this was more However, the challenge here is to find rea- challenging, indeed, there are not many pa- sons for this movement which is at first not pers about the specific relationship between expected. Indeed, as we mentioned, the two France and Armenia. Nevertheless, I read countries are far from each other and their many papers about the Armenian diaspora relations are not obvious. Through this re- in France and the history of Armenia. Con- search we found explanations to it, either cerning cultural diplomacy, most papers historical, political or economic. We decided speak about the African countries and rarely to list and detail them to explain, as much mention Armenia. Most of the papers I read as we can, the Armenian Francophile move- were in French since it was about France, but 2 See Overall Ranking 2017 https://softpower30.com/?country_years=2017 3 See Overall Ranking 2019 https://softpower30.com/?country_years=2019 4 Lane, Philippe. ‘Présence Française Dans Le Monde - L’action Culturelle et Scientifique de La France’. Re- searchGate, May 2016, 131. 83 3 2020/ . I also read in English. For this research, I ries of cohabitation leaves marks, Armenians also tried to reach professors, organizations would talk about it for generations creating related to Francophonie that are in Armenia a positive image of France in the Armenian and abroad. Unfortunately, most of them did imaginary. Something we need to understand not answer. I tried to diversify the point of is how France and the French language are views and the sources of information in or- still so appreciated when we know how import- der to be more relevant. Therefore, this pa- ant the Armenian language is for its speakers. per is mainly based on theoretical resources Indeed, Armenian is one of the rare languages found on different research platforms. directly descending from Indo-European and Deep and historic ties is still alive more than two thousand years af- These deep and ancient ties can find an ter. For linguists, it is a genuine treasury. As explanation in religion. Indeed, crusades were explained, the Armenian language is part of a series of religious wars supported by the what we called the Armenian resistance. Latin Church, the crusaders wanted to spread Coming back to history, most of the high Christianity, by force, in order to recover the dignitaries of the Ottoman Empire were fran- Holy Land from the Islamic rule. Since Arme- cophones and they lived in a French way. They nia is the first country to ever adopt Christi- succeeded in keeping their Armenian identi- anity as a state religion, they represented an ty and living a French life. Thus, through all ՀԱՅԱՍՏԱՆ ԵՎ ԱՇԽԱՐՀ . АРМЕНИЯ И МИР . ARMENIA AND WORLD WORLD И МИР . ARMENIA AND ԵՎ ԱՇԽԱՐՀ . АРМЕНИЯ ՀԱՅԱՍՏԱՆ important ally for the crusaders in the Eastern the XIX century, thanks to these lords and Mediterranean region. their patronage, French works were translat- Thus, one of the first contacts between ed, especially Victor Hugo’s works. With the France and Armenia dates back to the cru- French Revolution of 1789, the republican sades, at the time Armenia was the Arme- ideas convinced the minority of the Ottoman nian Kingdom of Cilicia (XII-XIX century). The Empire and more specifically the Armenian Frankish lords got married with the Armenian community. The fact that the Armenians took princesses creating a French-Armenian royal the French republican ideas does not look line, the last king of it was Leon V. This roy- like a coincidence, it can be interpreted as an al line lasted for three centuries, meaning as evidence of the Armenian-French old implic- much time to create and establish an import- it relationships. The Armenian revolutionary ant Francophilia sometimes with a Francopho- movement was well implemented in the East- nie, which, depending on the social classes, ern Anatolia, Cilicia and Constantinople.

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