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France plans anti-US 'counter-offensive' online
French President Jacques Chirac has vowed to launch a new "counter-offensive" against American cultural domination, enlisting the support of the British, German and Spanish governments in a multi-million euro bid to put the whole of European literature on-line.
The president was reacting last week to news that the American search-engine provider Google is to offer access to some 15 million books and documents currently housed in five of the most prestigious libraries in the English-speaking world.
The realisation that the "Anglo-Saxons" were on the verge of a major breakthrough towards the dream of a universal library seriously rattled the cultural establishment in Paris, raising again the fear that French language and ideas will one day be reduced to a quaint regional peculiarity.
So on Wednesday Chirac met with Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and National Library president Jean-Noel Jeanneney and asked them "to analyse the conditions under which the collections of the great libraries in France and Europe could be put more widely and more rapidly on the Internet".
"In the weeks to come, the president will launch initiatives in the direction of his European partners in order to propose ways of coordinating and amplifying efforts in this field," a statement said.
"A vast movement of digitalisation of knowledge is underway across the world. With the wealth of their exceptional cultural heritage, France and Europe must play a decisive part. It is a fundamental challenge for the spread of knowledge and the development of cultural diversity."
It was Jeanneney who alerted Chirac to the new challenge. In an article in Le Monde newspaper, France's chief librarian conceded that the Google-Print project, with its 4.5 billion pages of text, will be a boon to researchers and a long-awaited chance for poor nations to get access to global learning.
But he went on: "The real issue is elsewhere. And it is immense. It is confirmation of the risk of a crushing American domination in the definition of how future generations conceive the world.
"The libraries that are taking part in this enterprise are of course themselves generously open to the civilisations and works of other countries ... but still, their criteria for selection will be profoundly marked by the Anglo-Saxon outlook," he said.
Jeanneney drew as an example the 1989 celebrations to mark the two hundredth anniversary of the French revolution -- which he himself was personally in charge of.
It would have been "deleterious and detestable" for the image of France if the only texts popularly consulted around the world for an interpretation of the revolution were English-language ones, he said.
"It would have meant The Scarlet Pimpernel triumphing over Ninety-three (Victor Hugo's eulogistic account of the revolution); valiant British aristocrats triumphant over bloody Jacobins; the guillotine concealing the rights of man and the shining ideas of the Convention," he said.
Fear of American cultural hegemony has been a constant of French policy since the first sticks of chewing gum arrived during World War II.
The country's instinctive reaction has been protectionist, and today France maintains a complex web of laws and subsidies to defend its film, music and publishing industries. Only a few voices are ever raised to argue that protectionism can lead to introverted mediocrity.
But in the battle over what the French press has dubbed "omnigooglisation," protectionism is not an option. The all-pervasive nature of the Internet makes any attempt to freeze out a competitor impossible. Which leaves no alternative, Jeanneney said, but "counter-attack".
France in fact already has a minuscule version of the Google initiative already in hand. The Gallica project has put some 80,000 works and 70,000 images on-line, and is soon to make available the BNF's stock of 19th century newspapers.
But the programme's budget is less than one thousandth of the 200 million dollars that the US corporation is prepared to spend.
So Chirac has decided to turn to Europe in the hope that an alliance of nations can find the finance and will-power to fight back. With his belief in the so-called multipolar world, it is exactly the sort of mission that he believes Europe is ordained to carry out. Next month Donnedieu de Vabres is to meet with experts from several EU countries, and in May Chirac himself will outline his ideas at a European culture week in Paris.
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