ISSN 2981-894X (Online), ISSN 2203-5362 (Print)
JANE GILMOUR & ELAINE LEWIS, Foreword
Colin Nettelbeck was a co-founder of ISFAR and its journal Explorations (now The French Australian Review). He served in various roles (including president) in ISFAR from 1985 to 2000 and returned as president from 2011 to 2018. A Colin Nettelbeck Scholarship was set up in 2021 to recognise the central role Colin played in founding the Institute and his longstanding commitment and invaluable contribution to all its public and research activities. Colin passed away on October 21, 2022 after a long illness.
OPINION PIECES
DAVID CAMROUX, AUKUS and its Aftermath
In this transcript of his talk presented at an ISFAR seminar in the series ‘After the Elections: Is a Reset possible in French-Australian Relations?’, the author comments on the political situation in France following the French elections in May 2022 and then examines the response to the AUKUS decision in France and the import of the AUKUS decision in terms of Indo-Pacific geopolitical relations. He then comments on the positive response to the visit to France by newly-elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and surmises that a return to the relationship that flourished in the 1990s and early 2000s may evolve.
Keywords: AUKUS, French-Australian relations, Macron, Albanese, Indo-Pacific, South-East Asia.
IVAN BARKO, Australians’ Love-Hate Relationship with the French in the Last Two Centuries
An exploration, drawing on newspaper articles as well as other material, of the contradictory dispositions that have prevailed in Australian attitudes towards the French over the past two hundred years. The author explores the concept of what he calls the ‘Archibald syndrome’—dreaming of being French, the historical references that have coloured Australians’ views of the French, and the shared affinities between the two countries.
Keywords: francophilia, francophobia, the French in the Pacific, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides Question, Consul Biard d’Aunet, John Feltham Archibald, Stella Bowen.
ARTICLES
KERRY MURPHY, Henri Kowalski (1841–1916) in the Antipodes and His Comic Opera Queen Venus
French virtuoso pianist and composer Henri Kowalski visited Australia in 1880 and then returned in 1885 when he settled in Sydney for twelve years. In 1881 he wrote a comic opera, Queen Venus. with a libretto by Marcus Clarke. This paper traces the transformation of Queen Venus into a French fantaisie-bouffe called La Guerre aux hommes, ten years later. It reveals a story of unusual cultural entanglement across two countries.
Keywords: Cultural transfer, opera, travelling artists, Australian colonial music, nineteenth century France.
VERONIQUE DUCHÉ AND AMANDA LAUGESEN, ‘Somewhere in France: Language, Place and Remembrance in Australian Soldiers’ Periodical Culture
An exploration of the thesis that while for contemporary Australians Villers-Bretonneux is the main ‘lieu de commémoration’ (place of remembrance), for the First World War diggers, ‘lieux de mémoire’ (sites of memory) were created from a much wider and varied list of place names— places where they had been, and fought, Villers-Bretonneux being for them just one of many. Focusing on the 1918–1929 period, this article explores the Australian experience and memory of the First World War by analysing how the concept of place was constructed within trench journals and returned soldier periodical print culture.
Keywords: World War 1, ‘places of commemoration’, ‘places of memory’, trench journals, returned soldiers journals, returned soldiers’ periodicals.
EDOARDO BRUNETTI, An Australian Perspective on Occitan and Breton Ethnoregionalism in the Post-war Period to 1981
In France, the student occupations and strikes of May ’68 are well known, but the period was also of immense significance to the country’s ethnoregionalist movements, who sought to increase power and self-determination. From a period of rebuilding following the Second World War, the Breton and Occitan movements, which campaigned against the perceived oppression of their regions by the central French state, were able to find new audiences and grow significantly in the 1960s and 1970s. Through an analysis of primary and secondary sources, this article charts the history of the movements throughout the era, demonstrating how the growth of the movements was linked to the broader societal politicisation of the era. As the period of radicalism waned, so did the Breton and Occitan movements, which saw many of their key demands implemented following the election of François Mitterrand as President, depriving the movements of their key reasons for existence. Nevertheless, the movements left a significant legacy in this period, through both the acceptance of regionalist political demands by the national left, and the ideological refoundation of Breton and Occitan ethnoregionalism. The author reflects on how these movements have some parallels in Australian history.
Keywords: Brittany, Occitania, ethnoregionalism, Occitanism, Emsav, regionalism, nationalism.
DOCUMENTS NOTES AND REVIEWS
EMILY DOTTE-SAROUT, The Matilda Effect in Archaeology
The transcript of an interview first published in French in the AFRAN newsletter about the history of women archaeologists in the Pacific region. The article explores the fate of women who sought to pursue careers as archaeologists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and how their work has been consistently overshadowed by that of their male peers. She details the exploits of one of these women in particular, Adèle de Dombasle, a number of whose illustrations are held in the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.
Keywords: Pacific archaeologists, women in archaeology, Adèle de Dombasle, Edmond Ginoux de la Coche, Musée des Explorations du Monde, ethnographic illustrations.
KATHERINE HAMMITT, The Colibri of Pacific Publishing: Interview with Au vent des îles Founder, Christian Robert
This article is published in French. In an interview conducted in July 2022, Christian Robert talks about his role as founder and manager of the largest publishing house in francophone Oceania, Au vent des îles. From his position as editor and president of Tahiti’s editors’ association, Robert speaks to the history and outlook of publishing and disseminating francophone literature across the Pacific and throughout Europe. Though the corpus he promotes does not yet have the global visibility it merits, Robert ultimately foresees a hopeful future for Oceanian literature, as well as for expanding publishing across the Pacific.
Keywords: Oceania, publishing, literature, francophone, Transpacific, Au vent des îles.
PETER HODGES, French-Australian Encounters Number 8: French-Australian Exchanges in Literary Périgord: A personal Insight through the Translation and Promotion of a Memoir
Through a chance encounter, an Australian writer and translator embarks on a privileged journey into the world of literary Périgord as he translates into French and promotes his memoir, previously published in English.
Keywords: literary Périgord, Académie des Sciences, des Beaux-Arts et des Belles-Lettres du Périgord-Dordogne, Dad’s Diary: the wanderlust chronicles, Le Journal de papa : l’esprit d’aventure, Librairie Marbot, Périgueux.
TOM THOMPSON, Frank Moorhouse’s French Connection: A Tale of Reciprocity
The author, who is an Australian publisher, explores Australian author Frank Moorhouse’s lifelong interest in France and, in particular, his friendship with translator and publisher Jean-Paul Delamotte.
Keywords: Association Culturelle Franco-Australian (ACFA), Fictions 88, Festival Les Belles Étrangères, League of Nations Trilogy.
EDWARD DUYKER, A False Portrait of Lapérouse
The author, who is currently researching a biography of Jean-Francois de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, examines a portrait in the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts, which is claimed to be a portrait of Lapérouse and through comparison with other existing known portraits of Lapérouse, suggests that it may well not be as stated.
Keywords: Lapérouse, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Musée Lapérouse in Albi.
THE ANNUAL IVAN BARKO PRIZE
Awarded to Patricia Clarke, for her article ‘Australian Connections with the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune of Paris, 1871’, published in Issue Number 71 (Summer 2021–2022).
Keywords: Ivan Barko prize, ISFAR.
BOOK REVIEWS
Charlotte Mackay, Book Review: Jane Tuttle, My Sweet Guillotine
In her latest novel, Tuttle returns to the city that nearly killed her—the city to which she fled after the death of her mother and which attracts many of the artistic type by virtue of the intrinsic value it seems to place on the arts—in an attempt to rebuild her life post-accident.
Keywords: Jayne Tuttle, Paris, guillotine, trauma and survival.
Andrew Montana, Book Review: Jean-Claude Lesage, Australian Painters in Étaples, translated by Pauline Le Borgne
Lesage’s Australian Painters in Étaples may be a springboard for curious minds to take this English translation as a cue for further research into these artists working abroad in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Keywords: Australian painters, Étaples, artists ‘colonies, late nineteenth century, early twentieth century art.
Andrew McGregor, Book Review: Gemma King, Jacques Audiard
Jacques Audiard is without doubt one of France’s most celebrated contemporary filmmaking auteurs. It is, therefore, most timely and appropriate for Gemma King’s outstanding and definitive volume on the filmmaker to be published in the prestigious French Film Directors series by Manchester University Press.
Keywords: Jacques Audiard, French Film Directors.
Elaine Lewis, French-Australian Bibliographical Notes including a note on the latest journals in France relating to French-Australian Studies.