| Abstract | This article examines the struggle of France over which memories should make up their history. Throughout much of its past, France, more than most other countries, has been engaged in actual or cold civil wars punctuated by more or less long periods of national reconciliation that have required a need to forget. At least that is what a succession of recent French leaders, including four very different presidents of the Fifth Republic have maintained, explicitly or implicitly. Their appeals to national unity, implying the sacrifice of certain grievances, have inevitably met with protests from groups who have felt that they were being asked to give up pieces of their collective memory.
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