In France, the first definite indication of the assimilative spirit was evidenced during the days of Richelieu. The royal edicts of 1635 and 1642 stated that the natives, once converted to Catholicism, were to be considered ‘citizens and natural Frenchmen’. In spite of these early endeavours, which were chiefly of a religious nature, assimilation, as a clearly enunciated principle of French colonial policy, only becomes important during the decade of the French Revolution. According to some, the Revolution saw the true birth of assimilation, or, as one might put it, the idea of religious conversion evident during the ancien régime was now translated into political assimilation. Generally speaking, two important elements underlying the doctrine of assimilation are 1) the idea of basic human equality, and 2) the value of education as a corrective to environmental differences. Nourished by the Republic as a symbol of equality, the idea of assimilation never ceased henceforth to play an important role in colonial policy and doctrine. It was especially during the early years of the Third Republic that assimilation became the central doctrine of French colonial policy. During this epoch, a complex tangle of ideas emerged, relating new scientific ideas (cf. ‘Volkspsychologie’, national psychology, Social Darwinism, ..) – in a not always unequivocal way – to popular concepts of nationality and assimilation. Closely allied with the analysis of ‘French nature’ at the time, and having a strong impact on French colonial theory, was the importance of the mission civilisatrice, obviously with considerable bearings on education and schooling. In this paper, an investigation will be made of how French colonial thinking during the initial decennia of the Third Republic relates to the internal French educational policies, in the light of attempts to install a specific kind of citizen, subject or identity, not in the least via primary education. In particular, the position of (the children of) migrants will be put in this larger narrative (or comparison) of centre-periphery and its inherent educational thinking, in fact evoking the need to deconstruct classical perceptions, concepts and models of nineteenth century thinking about nation and citizenship. As the case of Belgian migrants in the North of France exemplifies, for most migrants – and probably for most French citizens, for that matter – these often very abstract and general notions were of little importance in their everyday dealings, limiting their analytical relevance. As far as (inter)cultural identity is concerned, and how it relates to practices and choices in the context of education and schooling, we’ll see that everyday pragmatic and local concerns strongly prevail as compared to larger teleological or essentialist notions of culture, citizenship or self-understanding. These reflections invoke the central importance of the dimensions of 1) the local, 2) the everyday, 3) interactivity (of agency and structure, or concerning migrants and local residents, for example) and 4) the pragmatic in historical research concerning processes of initiation into a culture, pointing at new vistas for research within cultural histories of education.

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