Chapter 4 1 Introduction We Continued Our Investigations in Paris, Another

Chapter 4 Paris

1 Introduction

We continued our investigations in Paris, another prominent world-city. We wondered whether data for this “City of Lights”, would elicit a LL profile differ- ent from Berlin’s, and we turned here, too, to the exploration of selected LLs. The oldest human traces in Paris are human bones dating from about 8000 bc (Le Monde, 2 July 2010). Between 250 and 225 bc, the Parisii, a Celtic tribe, settled on the banks of the Seine, built bridges and a fort, and began trading with other populations. In 52 bc, Rome made the place a Gallo-Roman gar- rison town, Lutetia. The town was Christianized in the 3rd century ad, and conquered and occupied by the Franks who made it one of their capitals in 508 (Schmidt 2009). During the Middle Ages, Paris became a large city and an important religious and commercial center. The University of Paris on the Left Bank, in existence since the mid-13th century, was one of the first in Europe. A halt in the city’s development took place between 1418 and 1436 when it was occupied by the Burgundians allied to the English in war with France. In the 16th century, Paris was already a major cultural focus, despite the fact that it was shaken by the War of Religion opposing Catholics and Protestants. The sumptuous home of France’s kings, ever since the 17th century, Paris has established as one of Europe’s major centers of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and arts. In the 18th century, it was the seat of the Enlightenment movement, and it is there that the French Revolution broke out in 1789. Ever since this event, a new political culture – Republicanism – became dominant and it was to definitively retain its hold on France’s leading elite circles. This ideology was elaborated and best formulated by the Abbé Grégoire. Grégoire was the first to take oath (27 December 1790) under the new revolu- tionary Civil Constitution of the Clergy. A convinced republican, he favored the abolition of the monarchy at the National Convention (21 September 1792) and in 1794, he raised the banner of the uniqueness and distinctiveness of French culture. He advocated a single French national language, French, for all citizens and fought for the eradication of patois – dialects – by making com- pulsory by law the use of French as the only language of the Republic (Rapport 2007). At that period, the vast majority of people in France spoke one of thirty- three dialects and Grégoire saw in these circumstances the principal obstacle to French national unity. From here began a process, expanded all over the

Paris 49

19th century by French governments and which reached its peak in the poli- cies of Jules Ferry (1932–1893) that led to the total ban of regional languages in the public space. Stigmatization (vergonha meaning “shame” in Occitan) was the lot that the authorities inflicted on dialect-speaking citizens – a genuine linguicide in the eyes of many (Fisher 1910). During the same century, Paris was embellished with monuments and other enterprises despite the two more revolutions (1830 and 1848) that shook it down to its foundations. Yet, the center of the city was rebuilt and Paris expanded to its present limits until 1860. In the 20th century, Paris suffered the two world wars but was re-established soon as a capital of intellectual creativ- ity, modern art, political and ideological polemics and, ever since the 1950s, as an outstanding space of museums. One finds in Paris world-known museums and architectural accomplishments – from the Louvre to the Musée d’Orsay. Landmarks include the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower. In 2015, 22.2 million individuals visited Paris, making it one of the world’s top tourist destinations (Paris Convention 2017). In 2005, however, Paris suffered unrest in the suburbs populated by immigrants and offspring from former colonies, and more recently, terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists that again upset and interrupted the flow of routine daily life. The Parisian Region accounted in 2014 for more than 30% of the Gross Do- mestic Product (gdp) of France (insee 2017) and the population is efficiently served by a ramified underground system, the Metro, that had been inaugu- rated as early as 1900. Today, this metro receives 5.23 million passengers daily (Metro 2016). Paris proper has two and a half million residents and, with the towns surrounding it, constitutes one of Europe’s largest urban populations – 12,300,000 inhabitants (insee 2014). It is the home of hundreds of multina- tional companies (Steele 1998). All these lead Higonnet (2009) to describe Paris – maybe exaggeratedly – as the capital of the world (see also Sarmant 2012).1

1 According to the 2012 Census (inse 2015), the population of the Région Parisienne num- bered 2,206,488, of whom 696,416 originated in Muslim countries (i.e. nearly one-third) and another about 200.000 from Africa (10%). Greater Paris reached about 6.5 million people, second behind Greater London (8 million). According to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, the city of Paris was the most densely populated city in the EU, with 21,616 people per square kilometer. 586,163 residents of the City of Paris, or 26.2%, and 2,782,834 residents of the Paris Region (Île-de-France), i.e. 23.4%, were born outside Metropolitan France. According to the 2012 census, 135,853 residents of the city of Paris were immigrants from Europe, 112,369 were immigrants from the Maghreb, 70,852 from sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, 5,059 from Turkey, 91,297 from Asia (outside Turkey), 38,858 from the Americas, and 1,365 from the South Pacific. Other migrants were from French overseas territories. French census data does not contain information about religious affiliation but according to a 2011 survey by ifop, a French public