Dear readers,

In this new episode of Why the West, I have the pleasure of welcoming David Cosandey, a Swiss physicist and author of The Secret of the West.

You can watch the interview on the Why The West YouTube channel (click here). The interview is in French, but YouTube's automatic English subtitle translation tool works very well. Click the Parameter button at the bottom right of the video to activate it.

Feel free to subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss the upcoming episodes.

Enjoy watching!

Guillaume

Why the West is and will remain completely free, but you can support the podcast by making a one-time donation (click here) or by subscribing (click below).

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This will help me finance and grow the podcast. Thank you!

Find all previous issues of Why the West on the homepage of the site. You can also follow me on X (ex-twitter).

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Dear readers,

for the sixth episode of the Why the West podcast, I'm delighted to welcome Miho Mastunuma, a perfectly Japanese historian who after growing up in Tokyo, taught in France and Japan. She now lives in Montreal, Canada. Thanks to her life shared between Japan and the West, she reveals the profound cultural differences between these two worlds.

You can watch the interview on the Why The West YouTube channel (click here). The interview is in French, but YouTube's automatic English subtitle translation tool works very well. Click the Parameter button at the bottom right of the video to activate it.

On the menu:

• Foreigners will never really understand Japan

• Universalism doesn't exist in Japan

• A major difference between Japan and France: aversion to conflict in the Japanese and a permanent spirit of contradiction in the French

• The world is just as it is

• How the Japanese see the world

• The gaze of God does not exist in Japan

• How is France perceived in Japan?

• Chinese, Korean and Japanese interest in Western classical music

• The difference between France and Quebec

• The Meiji era: a crucial period in Japanese history

• Gustave Émile Boissonnade, French jurist superstar in Japan

Enjoy watching!

Guillaume

Find all previous issues of Why the West on the homepage of the site. You can also follow me on X (ex-twitter).

Dear readers,

first of all, I would like to welcome my new subscribers, your interest is very appreciated.

For the fifth episode of the Why the West podcast, I have the pleasure of welcoming Christophe Dickès, a French historian and journalist specializing in Catholicism and the Vatican. He has just written Pour l'Église (For the Church), a book in which he recalls what we Westerners owe to the Christian religion.

You can watch the interview on the Why The West YouTube channel (click here). The interview is in French, but YouTube's automatic English subtitle translation tool works very well. Click the Parameter button at the bottom right of the video to activate it.

And now that 2024 is behind us, here are the 3 most shared posts last year on Why the West:

• On How the West Became Psychologically Different and Shaped the Modern World:

• Understanding the processes behind the U.S. and Europe’s technological and economic takeoff from the mid-second millennium onwards:

• Interview on the bestseller that seeks to answer the question: why did the West dominate the world, and not the other way around? Whith American Historian David Landes

Thank you for all the support,

Guillaume

Find all previous issues of Why the West on the homepage of the site. You can also follow me on X (ex-twitter).

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Dear readers,

For the third episode of the Why the West podcast, I am delighted to welcome Richard Landes, an American historian specialist in medieval Europe.

We discussed The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, the bestseller by his father, David Landes, an American historian and Harvard professor who passed away in 2013. Published in 1998, this book seeks to answer the question: why did the West dominate the world, and not the other way around?

You can watch the interview on the Why The West YouTube channel (click here).

Unfortunately for English speakers, the interview is in French (Richard Landes is fluent in the language of Molière), but YouTube's automatic English subtitle translation tool works very well! Click the Parameter button at the bottom right of the video to activate it.

This episode covers:

• Was the fall of the Roman Empire actually good for Europe?

• The European Middle Ages: a period of great innovation! The example of the invention of eyeglasses;

• How marriage rules played a key role in the economic rise of the West;

• The West’s rise: culture or geography? A debate with Jared Diamond;

• Colonization: the West didn’t have a monopoly on it;

• The role of monks in Europe’s economic growth;

• Did the Christian view of an organized God encourage the birth of modern science?

• Why could the Industrial Revolution have happened in China?

• The invention of invention in the Western Middle Ages.

Enjoy watching!

Guillaume

Find all previous issues of Why the West on the homepage of the site. You can also follow me on X (ex-twitter).

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Dear Readers,

Today, I wanted to discuss What is the West?, a short and incisive work published in 2004. In just 150 pages, French political ideas historian Philippe Nemo explains the five historical processes behind the U.S. and Europe’s technological and economic takeoff from the mid-second millennium onwards. There’s no western self-congratulation in Nemo's approach; rather, it's a quest to understand the foundational moments in the history of the West.

This article is no substitute for reading the book—which I highly recommend—but it does provide a summary of the five key processes the historian identifies as the roots of our civilization’s uniqueness. Let’s take a closer look at them.

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1. The Greek Miracle: The Invention of the City-State, Freedom under the Law, and Science

Nemo points out that the Greek city-state marked an unprecedented revolutionary leap. For the first time in history, power shifted from the secrecy of the royal palace to the public square—the agora. This was the birth of the political sphere: public matters were debated by citizens, which presupposed their equality before the law and the use of reason to persuade (thus promoting the rise of science). Laws were no longer mystical or religious in nature but human constructs, which meant they could be freely amended by people.

“Through these innovations, the Greeks established the principles of rule by law and individual freedom, which became the civic foundation upon which modern constitutional states would be built. Once citizens were required to obey only a general, equal, and anonymous rule—rather than a personal, discretionary command from a king—and once the rule was public, known in advance, certain, and stable, citizens always knew how to act to avoid coercion. They had clear, reliable means to foresee what was lawful or unlawful, which allowed them to take control of their own lives, decide their activities independently, and become free beings. The civic formula invented by the Greeks thus created individual freedom in the sense it would always be understood in the West.”

2. The Roman Miracle: The Invention of Law, Private Property, the “Person,” and Humanism

Roman law laid down the foundations of concepts we use every day, including personal law (inheritance, family, marriage), property law (ownership, leasing), and obligation law (contracts, sales). Through these concepts, the Romans introduced the notion of private law, which precisely defined what belongs to "you and me."

The result was transformative: by creating private law, the Romans invented the concept of the individual human person, whose status is legally defined and protected. This would later become the basis of what we would call European humanism during the Renaissance.

“The Greeks had invented 'government by law,' but they did not fully develop the legal framework. In the small, ethnically homogenous Greek city-states, law remained largely unwritten (which is why Greek law is so poorly documented). However, if law is to make peaceful and fruitful cooperation among people possible by clearly delineating what is mine and yours, it is obvious that it will fulfill this role all the more effectively the more precisely these boundaries are defined.

It was this refinement that Roman magistrates and jurists accomplished. In just a few centuries, they built an advanced system of private law unparalleled by any previous civilization. In undertaking this work, the Romans completely transformed the concept of humanity and the human person.”

3. The Invention of the Idea of Progress by Judeo-Christianity

Judeo-Christian thought introduced a fundamental concept: progress. By breaking away from the cyclical view of time held in antiquity, the Bible introduced a forward-oriented timeline—starting with Creation and moving toward an "end of times" when "all things will be made new" (Revelation).

“It seems to me that it was the Judeo-Christian ethic of love or compassion, which introduced a new sensitivity to human suffering, that fostered a unique spirit of rebellion against the idea of the normality of evil. This spirit—unparalleled in previous history—set into motion the dynamic of historical progress.”

4. The Papal Revolution of the 11th–13th Centuries

In the 11th century, the promise of Christ’s swift return remained unfulfilled after a thousand years. A new Catholic doctrine began to take hold: the belief that the world had become too corrupt and needed to be transformed to become worthy of Christ's return.

To transform the world, however, one must first understand it. Thus, the Church encouraged the use of reason, making Greek science and Roman law a duty of study. This Papal Revolution was a synthesis of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, aimed at transforming the world.

5. The Rise of Liberal Democracy

The gradual emergence of liberal democracy—the political system common to today’s Western nations—from the 18th century onward was built on the four previous civilizational foundations: individual freedom, the rule of law, the primacy of reason, and the idea of progress.

Institutions that protect political freedoms (freedom of thought, freedom of the press, an independent judiciary), scientific freedom (academic freedom, freedom to innovate), and economic freedom (the right to enterprise and respect for contracts) have gradually been consolidated. All of which made the U.S. and Europe the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

Conclusion

Some of these five processes also influenced other civilizations, but only the West was shaped by all five—and by none other. According to Nemo, this unique combination explains the U.S. and Europe’s remarkable rise from the 18th century onward and the development of a distinctive mindset.

This book is a must-read: in just 150 pages, Nemo traces the history of Western civilizational achievements. A valuable resource for understanding who we are.

Find all previous issues of Why the West on the homepage of the site and on the Why the West’s YouTube channel. You can also follow me on X (ex-twitter).

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Dear readers,

for this second episode of the Why the West podcast, I am pleased to welcome Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, diplomatic advisor to French president Jacques Chirac from 2002 to 2007, and French ambassador to China, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

After 40 years of service in French diplomacy, he has published Les Autres ne pensent pas comme nous (“Others Don’t Think Like Us”), a book in which he shares lessons from his international experience as a top French diplomat.

You can watch the interview on the Why the West YouTube channel (click here). Unfortunately for English speakers, the interview is in French, but YouTube's automatic English subtitle translation tool works very well! Click the Parameter button at the bottom right of the video to activate it.

In this episode, we cover:

• What does an ambassador do on a daily basis?

• Discovering and studying other civilizations to better understand our own.

• “Others don’t think like us! The motto of a lifetime.”

• 1998–2002: The risk of “tatamization” and the lessons from four years as France’s ambassador to Japan.

• “Germans are not French people who speak German.”

• One Germany or many?

• Francophile Britons?

• Universalism: A French and Western particularity.

• Clash of civilizations?

• At the Élysée palace with Jacques Chirac and relations with the United States.

• France: Rebound or "Lebanonization"?

• Chirac, Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore, and Asia.

• Reading recommendations: foreign civilizations and biographies of great leaders.

Enjoy watching!

Guillaume

P.S. Below is the interview about Japan that I mentioned in the episode:

Find all previous issues of Why the West on the homepage of the site. You can also follow me on X (ex-twitter).

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Dear readers,

because a civilization is embodied in its monuments, I wanted to talk to you about classical Western architecture, which is the architectural style inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity and found in the cities of Europe and North America. This architecture has become an important element of Western identity: for example, in our collective imagination, a facade with a colonnade symbolizes an institutional building like a courthouse or a town hall.

I will base this paper on the work of John Summerson, a British historian and author of The Classical Language of Architecture, who describes the classical style as “the Latin of Western architecture.” This book, for example, taught me the origin of architectural elements we regularly encounter in Europe and its offsprings, such as the column.

The Origins of the Classical Style

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More than a year after launching this newsletter, I am delighted to introduce a new format: here is the first filmed podcast of Why the West.

Click on the video below to watch the interview on the Why the West YouTube channel (called Chroniques occidentales in French). Unfortunately for English speakers, the interview is in French, but YouTube's automatic English subtitle translation tool works very well!

I will, of course, continue writing articles for this newsletter. These will now be supplemented by these filmed interviews. For this first podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing David Baverez, investor, essayist, and China specialist based in Hong Kong.

He has just published Bienvenue en économie de guerre (Welcome to the war economy in English, not translated yet) and the book number 1 bestseller on the French Amazon in the International Relations category. In this interview, we discuss the following questions:

• China and the West, two opposing civilizations?

• Is China seeking revenge?

• What is the war economy?

• Are we in a new technological cold war?

• The 21st century will be technological;

• How do the Chinese understand the concept of freedom?

• What should Europe do in response to China?

• Is China repeating the same mistake it made 500 years ago?

• France is the country of human rights, China is the country of human duties;

• Now that it is the workshop of the world, will China become the retirement home of the planet?

Please feel free to share your feedback: your opinion is valuable in making this podcast a relevant complement to the newsletter.

Enjoy watching,

Guillaume

Find all previous issues of Why the West on the homepage of the site. You can also follow me on X (ex-twitter).

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Dear readers,

today I am pleased to interview Pierre Valentin, essayist and regular contributor to Le Figaro (the second-largest newspaper in France), who recently published Comprendre la révolution woke - Understanding the woke revolution.

The product of 2 years of work, this book offers a surgical analysis of wokism, its paradoxes, and the dangers this ideology poses to Western societies.

Guillaume Gau: What is wokism? The term has become ubiquitous in public discourse, but I must admit I couldn't define it precisely.

Pierre Valentin: Wokism is an ideology that perceives Western societies as fundamentally governed by power structures, hierarchies of domination, and systems of oppression that aim, or at least have the effect, of "inferiorize" the Other, meaning minority figures in all their forms (sexual, religious, ethnic, etc.), often through invisible means. The "woke" individual is one who is "awakened" to this harmful reality and takes it upon themselves to raise awareness among others.

G.G.: In my articles, I regularly discuss the identity of Western civilization. It is the one that has most fostered critical thinking, and the nations within it are among the most tolerant. You write that "wokism punishes the West for its virtues. What other cultures are so eager to accuse themselves? (...) Wokism could not have sprouted elsewhere." How do you explain that wokism is primarily a Western phenomenon?

P.V.: As the Polish intellectual Leszek Kolakowski wrote, it was the West that invented anthropology, which is the desire—always impossible but nonetheless healthy—to study external cultures without imposing one's own framework. However, it is precisely this same civilization that is now accused of being too "Eurocentric". It's a philosophically Western critique of the West within wokism.

To explain this phenomenon of accusatory inversion, we could look to Alexis de Tocqueville's paradox of equality, which states that as the principle of equality of conditions is concretized, the slightest residual inequality seems all the more inadmissible. Those who have gone furthest in egalitarianism are criticized for their lack of egalitarianism.

This can be seen at several levels: only societies that understand the meaning of the word "transgender" are perceived as "transphobic." Only countries whose companies unanimously display their logos in rainbow colors are accused of homophobia. Only nations that take a knee for Black Lives Matter are labeled as "racist."

G.G.: You write that "woke ideology is pure negation." What do you mean by that?

P.V.: When these activists are asked to define themselves in one word, it's usually "anti-racist" or "anti-sexist," meaning they always define themselves in terms of opposition. The most popular concept in social sciences for several decades has been "deconstruction." The mode of action for these activists is to tear down statues, not to build them. Their utopia is always a negative photograph, a world "without" racism, sexism, etc.

This thesis may seem radical or intentionally provocative, but I assure you there is no other way to find some form of coherence among the myriad contradictions these activists profess.

Among the counterarguments often cited is the idea that they are simply "defending minorities" or advocating for equality, which are positive assertions at the core of their ideology. However, as I demonstrate in the first chapter of the book, these arguments are actually facades used to conceal deep-seated resentment. The minority has a purely instrumental value in this ideology, and these activists aspire to a revenge or an inversion of the existing system, rather than any real "equality."

A previous issue of Why the West on what the West owes to Greco-Roman antiquity:

G.G.: One of the dangers of wokism, as you describe it, is what you call "mediocrisation", meaning prioritizing inclusion over competence. Do you have examples of this trend in France or abroad?

Without straying too far from my area of expertise, I believe I can suggest that part of the so-called "tech bubble" bursting, as well as universities collapsing, can be explained by "DEI" (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies. This is not to say that "minorities" cannot be competent, but rather that when we stop pursuing the scarce resource that is competence, we will inevitably lose it.

When your father is going to have surgery, you prefer the surgeon to be competent rather than “representative”. When our priority shifts to fulfilling identity quotas rather than aiming for excellence, it's likely that trains arriving on time, administrations functioning efficiently, and planes taking off will become fortunate accidents.

When your father is going to have surgery, you prefer the surgeon to be competent rather than “representative”. Pierre Valentin

G.G.: Wokes believe that the ultimate goal of Western societies is to "oppress minorities". Ultimately, isn't wokism a form of far-left conspiracy theory?

P.V.: One notion that frequently appears in woke writings is that of the "System." It has many synonyms: "The Cistem" (referring to "cisgender" individuals, those who are not "transgender"), patriarchy, "heteropatriarchy," "whitriarchy," and so on. This negative abstraction is perceived as omnipresent and all-powerful. In the new conception of racism, now deemed "systemic," one can even have racism without racists. Here, we have a form of conspiracy theory that doesn't require conspirators.

Conceptualizing the existence of a harmful system allows dissenters to position themselves perpetually "against" it. When you oppose an individual, you may risk moral unemployment when he disappears. Opposing a more abstract and nebulous entity guarantees a long activist career. Moreover, it also absolves individuals of the burden of proof: once the evil is "systematized," there's no longer a need to demonstrate that a specific act occurred at a certain place and time, etc.

G.G.: The prosperity and freedoms we enjoy in the West did not fall from the sky but were built over centuries by our ancestors. I agree with your conclusion that one remedy against the woke movement is to promote gratitude for our civilizational heritage. But concretely, how can we do this?

P.V.: The question is broad, and the task is difficult. The ongoing miracle is civilization and the absence of anarchy. All of this hangs by a thread, suspended over a void.

The psychological essence of wokism is guilt for the "dominant" and resentment for the "dominated". To break free from this sadomasochistic dance, we need to instill pride and gratitude. Simply telling a generation that their ideological life raft is carcinogenic will never be enough. Denial of denial is not affirmation!

I am not a politician, so I don’t have concrete measures to propose, aside from educating the French and the Westerners on this issue. But it's clear that we need to rediscover the unifying narrative that once was ours. We must be able not only to count the achievements of our civilization but also to tell their story.

G.G.: I share your perspective and would like to recommend some of my recent articles to our readers about great storytellers of civilization, such as the French Hellenist Jacqueline de Romilly—on what the West owes to Athens—and the British historian Tom Holland—on what the West owes to Christianity. Thank you for this discussion!

P.V.: Thank you for the invitation, it was a pleasure!

Comprendre la révolution woke has not yet been translated into English, but you can follow the author on X (formerly Twitter), where he regularly posts in English.

Find all previous issues of Why the West on the homepage of the site. You can also follow me on X (ex-twitter).

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Dear readers,

in this edition of Why the West, I wanted to share a recent read that particularly struck me: The Weirdest People in the World by Joseph Henrich, an American anthropologist and professor at Harvard.

He delves into a question that has intrigued me for years: why did Europe, from the 16th century, begin an economic and technological boom unprecedented in the history of humanity? According to the author, it's primarily a story of mentality: Westerners have developed a particular psychology that is at the root of their economic and scientific success.

Let's take a closer look.

A Universalist and Individualist Mentality

The book opens with a university study called "The Passenger's Dilemma." Imagine you're in a friend's car. He is speeding well above the limit and, unable to brake in time, hit a pedestrian. Following the accident, the police arrest him. If you lie and testify that he was driving within the speed limit, he avoids prison. What would you do?

Westerners respond very differently from other cultures. In the United States, Australia, Norway, or Switzerland, 90% of participants refuse to lie to spare their friend from prison. Overall, this rate exceeds 80% in all Western countries. This result reflects a commitment to universal rules and the value of impartiality, even at the expense of friendship or family ties. These results contrast with the rest of the world: in China, Venezuela, or South Korea, over 50% of participants agree to testify and thus lie to spare their friend from prison. The author summarizes this difference in mentality with a well-phrased formula: "What we call favoritism, others call solidarity."

The anthropologist highlights another study underscoring the unique mentality of Westerners. When asked to complete the sentence "I am ...," they are much more likely than others to respond with a personal attribute ("I am a professor," "I am an athlete"). Conversely, participants from other civilizations are more inclined to respond with their place in the family structure ("I am the brother of...", "I am the daughter of..."). I personally experienced this in India, where you are often asked, "Are you married?" before being asked, "What do you do for a living?"

Finally, the author shows that Westerners are more likely to feel guilt than shame, whereas it's the opposite in other civilizations. Guilt is a private emotion triggered by falling short of our own expectations; shame arises from not meeting the expectations of one's community.

So why such differences between the psychology of Westerners and that of other civilizations?

The Origins of a Very Distinct Mentality

The anthropologist illustrates that Westerners have developed a unique psychology over the past two millennia: the clan or tribal mentality, which is the "normal" organization of human societies, has gradually given way to a more individualistic, universal, and impartial mentality. Henrich adds that from an anthropological standpoint, this Western mentality is very peculiar WEIRD (the acronym for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic ) has nothing natural about it: humans spontaneously and normally have a clan mentality, based on strong family ties, and not on individuality or impartiality.

According to Joseph Henrich, the origins of this particular mentality can be traced back to the religious history of the West. From the 4th century onwards, the Catholic Church began to prohibit marriages between increasingly distant cousins. For instance, in 1050, when William the Conqueror wanted to marry his fifth cousin, Pope Leo IX opposed it in accordance with the rule prohibiting consanguineous marriages up to the seventh degree of kinship. By weakening extended kinship ties, the Church fostered the emergence of voluntary associations and contractual institutions —non-familial or non-clan-based— such as guilds, monasteries (I've written here or here about their fundamental role in Europe's economic development), free cities, universities, businesses, and so forth. This mentality gradually facilitated the rise of social mobility, individualism, and the advent of the rule of law. Societies that guarantee more freedom to their members tend to be more prosperous, and these developments favored economic development.

Thus, through the imposition of increasingly strict rules regarding cousin marriages, the Church unintentionally promoted the emergence in Europe of a weird but more open mentality built upon universally applicable laws, breaking away from the "normal" mentality of human societies based on kinship and blood ties.

The Consequences of a Very Distinct Mentality

While they may not always make good friends when it comes to lying to the police, Westerners are more inclined than others to trust people outside their close circle (see map above) or to donate blood. It's a self-perpetuating phenomenon: the emergence of institutions based on individual freedom, in turn, favored individualistic, universalist, and impartial mentalities. Joseph Henrich sees in this virtuous circle one of the factors in the consolidation of democracy in the West.

Henrich also demonstrates that this mentality stimulated innovation in Europe, as individuals were more willing to share their ideas and collaborate with people outside their family circle. The Industrial Revolution and modern science were born out of the scientific and intellectual emulation sweeping across Europe since the Renaissance.

The author also notes that Japan, China, or Korea, eager to catch up economically with the West, successfully "copied and pasted" certain rules and institutions that they identified as fundamental to building a prosperous country. The rules these countries adopted are precisely those that, over the centuries, had materialized this particular mentality in the legal systems of Western countries. Thus, starting from the 1880s, Japan implemented a civil code inspired by that of Germany and France. In China, in the 1950s, the Communist Party launched a program to abolish clans, arranged marriages, and inheritance inequalities between daughters and sons. In 1957, South Korea introduced a Western-style civil code prohibiting marriages between cousins up to the third degree and requiring the consent of the future spouses.

If you're interested in the rise of Europe, I recommend this article on a book that complements Henrich's work:

Let's Summarize.

For the anthropologist, the gradual prohibition by the Church of marriage between increasingly distant degrees of kinship removed Westerners from a clan-based mentality and dissolved institutions based on blood ties, which fostered trust among non-family-related individuals and allowed for the emergence of individualistic and innovative societies, based on the rule of law and individual freedom. These conditions facilitated the economic and scientific development of Europe.

Henrich shows us that mentalities play a crucial but often overlooked role in the history of civilization development. They are, for him, the dark matter of history. He deliberately adopts this term from astrophysics, referring to those components of the universe that science struggles to explain, such as black holes. If the industrial revolution emerged in Europe, it wasn't because we had more coal or more fertile fields, but because Europeans had the mentality conducive to innovation. This idea echoes that of American historian David S. Landes: in his seminal work The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (1996), he explains Europe's rise through a mentality favorable to innovation, which he called "the invention of invention."

Find all previous articles from Why the West on the homepage of the website. You can also follow me on X (ex-twitter).

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Dear Readers,

today we delve into one of France's most remarkable industrial success stories of recent decades. Xavier Fontanet was the CEO of Essilor from 1991 to 2010: in 20 years, he and his team transformed this French SME into a global leader in spectacle lenses. In Conquérir le monde avec son équipe (Conquering the world with his team), the CEO explains Essilor's development and its conquest of the world's major markets (United States, Japan, China, Korea, etc.). He looks back on his international experiences and shares with us the lessons of this success.

In 2018, Essilor merged with Luxottica, an Italian eyewear manufacturer, creating a conglomerate with a turnover exceeding 20 billion euros.

Xavier Fontanet is now a professor of strategy at HEC Business School and hosts a weekly show on BFM Business (a French TV channel) devoted to corporate strategy. We met in a Parisian café in December: the following interview captures our conversation.

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Guillaume Gau: In “Conquering the world with your team”, you write that business is the best way to get to know other cultures. Can you tell me more about this?

Xavier Fontanet: Indeed, that's my conviction. Launching a business in a foreign market means building relationships of trust with the locals and showing a great deal of humility in understanding the local culture.

Let me give you a few examples: to establish Essilor in Japan, we created a joint venture (a joint subsidiary) with Nikon. This Japanese manufacturer, known for its cameras, also makes spectacle lenses. Over the years, I've developed an understanding of Japanese culture through regular visits to the archipelago and daily contact with Japanese teams. There are many cultural specificities: for example, you must never criticise in public, or make a colleague lose face in front of his colleagues. It's a fundamental aspect of Japanese identity, a question of honour. If you want to disagree, do it in the evening, after a few drinks. I've also noticed that the Japanese can be paralysed by difficult situations. It's the opposite for the French: thanks to their Cartesian and creative minds, they're very good at working in a mess or when their backs are against the wall. On the other hand, when the situation has stabilised, it's difficult to do better than the Japanese in terms of excellence.

On the differences between Japanese and Western identity, read this interview with a French-speaking Japanese historian I conducted last summer:

Another people who impressed me were the Koreans: they are masters at simplifying manufacturing processes. It's not surprising that they have succeeded in creating global industrial leaders like Samsung and Hyundai.

In China, the authorities have always welcomed Essilor's investments because they understood one thing: better eyesight means better labour productivity. For them, it was fundamental that the working population should be well equipped with eyewear to support the country's industrial take-off.

In Europe, the Germans and the Swiss have a real industrial culture and an innate sense of quality. This can be explained by their education systems, which promote apprenticeships, technical training and links with business. This is one of the reasons why these two countries have not undergone deindustrialization: unlike France, the crazy idea of a society without factories could not germinate there.

G.G.: You and your team have transformed Essilor into an industrial leader, prevailing in the most competitive global markets against formidable Japanese, American, and German competitors. What are the reasons behind this success?

X.F.: I identify three main reasons.

Firstly, it's the innovation and quality of our products. Essilor pioneered two fundamental inventions: progressive lenses, allowing presbyopes (who represent 40% of the global population) to see clearly at all distances, and organic lenses (previously, glasses used the same glass as our windows). These technological advancements have enabled hundreds of millions of people to see better. Our relentless pursuit of innovation has driven growth levels exceeding 10% annually. We've also tailored lenses to populations; for instance, while most Chinese people are nearsighted and require thick lenses, Indians have shorter eyes and tend to become presbyopic.

Secondly, having a solid strategy for the company is crucial; otherwise, you won't have followers. Moreover, it's essential that employees understand and share it: I spent most of my time explaining the strategy at all levels of the company. The direction must be clear. From this shared strategy stems a fundamental element in a company's success: trust. Once trust is established, everything becomes easier and less contentious. The night before battles, Napoleon would explain the strategy for the next day to his soldiers. They felt valued, thus motivated.

Lastly, there's employee stock ownership. Essilor has implemented an extremely proactive policy to turn its collaborators, more than mere employee-shareholders, into employee-shareholders. When your team becomes employee-owners, everything changes. Your collaborators transform into highly engaged businessmen deeply invested in the company's success. And this ownership wasn't limited to executives: some workers could retire with windfalls of €200,000, the value of their accumulated shares at Essilor. It provides a more serene retirement! At Essilor, with unions, I discussed more about purchasing shares conditions (terms for employees acquiring company shares) than salary increases.

G.G.: France is currently attempting to reindustrialize. What is your analysis of the situation, and what do you propose?

X.F.: While the situation has improved somewhat in recent years, French industry still bears a fiscal burden that undermines its competitiveness. For instance, even with recent reductions, production taxes remain on average twice as high as in the rest of Europe. Beyond the fiscal burden, there's also bureaucratic red tape: companies must allocate increasing resources to deal with administrative complexity. These resources could be invested elsewhere, such as in innovation. The impact is tangible because a company's strategy is how it allocates its human and financial resources across different arenas, whether geographical or technological.

More broadly, excessive public spending translates into production costs. This is what I call the "Fontanet theorem": the more bloated your public sector, the higher your production costs. The cost of the public sector has to end up somewhere; inevitably, it falls back onto the productive sector.

Simplification, lower taxation, and of course, innovation, these are the three priorities for reindustrializing France.

Find below my annual study on attractiveness and the battle for mega-factories in Europe:

G.G.: Finally, do you have any books to recommend?

X.F.: I recommend From Third World to First by Lee Kuan Yew. He led Singapore for 30 years and turned this small trading post on the Malay Peninsula into one of the most prosperous city-states in the world. In this book, he explains his strategy based on attractiveness and innovation. I met him several times because we were hesitating between Hong Kong and Singapore for Essilor's Asian headquarters. He wanted to make his city an industrial and financial hub, so he rolled out the red carpet for us. The advantage of Singapore is that you can oversee operations in both India and China simultaneously. Hong Kong is too focused on China.

In French, I recommend Du Miracle en économie by Alain Peyrefitte, a writer and minister under de Gaulle and Pompidou. In this work, he analyzes the economic success of England, the Netherlands, or Japan. He highlights the fundamental role played by trust in the development of these countries: by creating social harmony, trust enables the actors in a society to collaborate and project themselves into the future. Whether for a country or a company, trust is a fundamental element of success. But it cannot be decreed: you must know how to create the conditions for its emergence.

G.G.: Thank you for this insightful conversation!

X.F.: My pleasure! Feel free to check out my show on BFM Business's page: you can find over 200 episodes dedicated to corporate strategy there.

Find all previous articles from Why the West on the homepage of the website. You can also follow me on X (ex-twitter).

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Dear readers,

after our immersion in Japanese identity, back to Europe for a special issue. In February 2023, I published a study entitled "France in the European battle for gigafactories”. If you are in a hurry, this op-ed I wrote on fdi Intelligence, the Financial Times global investment website, is a good executive summary.

Today I'm publishing the 2024 edition of the study in which I take stock of the year 2023 and pinpoint the major industrial projects which should choose their location in Europe in 2024. You can find it below.

Guillaume

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France in the European battle for gigafactories

While the Choose France summits have highlighted France's attractiveness for foreign industrial investment, the country has seen many large-scale projects slip through its fingers, such as Tesla or Intel. Today, France is all the more in need of hosting the next "mega-factories" to be set up in Europe, as it has become more de-industrialized than its European neighbours. This study aims to :

• summarize France's successes and failures in setting up "mega-factories" in 2023,

• detail the next 6 major industrial locations which should choose their location in Europe in 2024,

• outline the measures in place to attract major industrial investments to France,

• and propose new measures to improve France's attractiveness to mega-factories.

In this study, we define "mega-plant", gigafactory or large-scale foreign industrial investment as follows: an industrial project over €500m with majority foreign capital that is the subject of competition between countries to host it.

Summary

I. Review of the European industrial battles in 2023

A. The French victories

1. Prologium

2. Novo Nordisk

3. Holosolis

B. The French defeats

1. BYD

2. TSMC

C. Battles that never happened

1. Vinfast

2. Samsung

D. Summary table for 2023

II. 6 major industrial projects not to be missed in 2024

A. Moderna

B. Tesla

C. Skeleton Technologies

D. Alteo-Wscope

E. Umicore

F. The European plant of a Chinese manufacturer

G. Summary table: €6.5 billion of investment and 5,500 jobs at stake

III. How to win these projects

A. Measures have been taken...

1. The supply-side policy

2. The Green Industry Act

3. Choose France summits: French-style soft power

B. But France's attractiveness still needs to improve

1. Threats to supply-side policy?

2. Land, administrative simplification, training, a dedicated ministry: the battle for reindustrialization is still far from won.

3. Industrialists' concerns about making the most of the French nuclear fleet

Conclusion

I. Review of the European industrial battles in 2023

A. The French victories

1. Prologium

The Taiwanese manufacturer of new-generation batteries has chosen Dunkirk as the location for its €5.2 billion plant. The French port was competing with a site in the Netherlands and one in Germany. 3,000 jobs are expected to be created over the long term. This is a great victory for the Hauts-de-France Battery Valley, which is consolidating its position as a major centre for electric vehicles in Europe.

There are 5 main reasons for this success:

• access to low-carbon, competitive electricity thanks to nuclear power ;

• a battery industry ecosystem being created in the north of France (creation of dedicated training courses, establishment of upstream and downstream players in the battery value chain);

• a €1.5 billion subsidy in several tranches up to 2029;

• strong involvement and aggressive lobbying on the part of public players, from the French President to local councillors, not forgetting Business France and Nord France invest, who worked together to convince the company's directors to carry out the project in France;

• the vice-chairman of Prologium is a Frenchman, formerly of Renault.

2. Novo Nordisk

In November, the Danish pharmaceutical giant announced that it will invest €2.1 billion to expand its Chartres plant. France was competing with Ireland to host this "pharmaceutical gigafactory". This is a major victory for France, which will enable to expand and secure a major pharmaceutical site, create 500 jobs and reduce the country's trade deficit.

I have analysed the statements made by several people involved in this issue (Novo Nordisk executives, specialist journalists, French authorities) and there seem to be 6 reasons for this choice, listed here from the most to the least crucial:

• 1. Novo Nordisk wanted to move quickly to increase its production capacity in response to the explosion in global demand for anti-obesity and anti-diabetes products, and expanding an existing site is quicker than building a new one. Apart from Denmark, where it has just announced a €6bn investment in its historic site, Chartres is the company's only other European site;

• 2. the government's pro-business policy (lower production taxes, lower corporation tax and reform of the labour market) reassured the Danish company that the site would be competitive in the long term and that the investment would be profitable;

• 3. Decarbonised electricity thanks to nuclear power: the CEO of Novo Nordisk emphasised this crucial point, as the company is very committed to the energy transition and is aiming for carbon neutrality by 2045;

• 4. the very strong lobby from the President of the Republic and Bercy: Novo's CEO was in direct contact with the President and took part in the Choose France summit in May 2023. He praised the responsiveness of the French authorities in bringing the project to fruition quickly;

• 5. France's geographical position, well placed to serve the European market;

• 6. and the reforms underway to reduce the time it takes to bring medicines to market in France and to set prices. But this is not the most important factor, as the plant is designed for export.

More generally, the trend in foreign investment in the pharmaceutical industry in France has been positive in recent months, with several major announcements: These include Novo Nordisk (€2.1bn), GSK (€350m), Lilly (€160m) and Pfizer (€1bn in R&D). Germany is also in the running ($2.5bn invested by Lilly).

3. Holosolis

In May 2023, the European consortium Holosolis announced that it would invest €710m to build one of Europe's largest photovoltaic cell and panel factories in Hambach, in Eastern France. 1,700 jobs are expected to be created. This is a crucial investment: 90% of the panels installed in Europe are imported from China. With an annual output of 5 gigawatts, this plant will be able to equip one million European homes a year.

Several European sites were competing. The French site was chosen in part because it is a turnkey industrial site. A previous photovoltaic panel factory project for which the site had been serviced and prepared was finally cancelled. The site was therefore available for a new project "that wanted to move quickly".

Public consultation is underway and work is due to start this summer.

B. The French defeats

1. BYD

Chinese carmaker BYD, the world's leading manufacturer of electric vehicles ahead of Tesla, has chosen Hungary as the location for its future European plant. France was in the running, alongside Germany, Spain, Poland and the Magyar winner. Bruno Le Maire, French finance minister, travelled to Shenzhen in August to meet BYD's CEO and try to convince him to build the plant in France. It was not enough.

With France's automotive trade deficit set to reach €20 billion by 2022, this plant was an opportunity for France to repeat the success of Toyota's move to Valenciennes in 2001. The Japanese manufacturer's plant has since become France's leading automotive site in terms of the number of vehicles produced, and the majority of its output is exported.

Winning the BYD plant would also be an opportunity to make up for Tesla's failure: Elon Musk's European gigafactory, which moved to Berlin in 2019, already employs 11,000 people. The size of BYD's Hungarian plant could be close to that of the American manufacturer's German plant.

2. TSMC

Although the decision was already in the air, it wasn't until August 2023 that TSMC made it official that it would be setting up its first European plant in Dresden, in eastern Germany. The Taiwanese chip giant will invest €10 billion and create 2,000 jobs. The worst thing about this deal is that France does not seem to have been seriously considered as a location. Thanks to its critical mass, Silicon Saxony, the microelectronics cluster around Dresden, now dominates the European semiconductor landscape: TSMC has set up there, among other reasons, because it can find the suppliers it needs there.

While STMicroelectronics and GlobalFoundries are investing €8 billion near Grenoble, our neighbour across the Rhine has invested €50 billion over the past 3 years (Intel, TSMC, Wolfspeed, Infineon, etc.), a ratio of 1 to 6. When it comes to chips, Germany is in the driving seat.

C. Battles that never happened

1. Vinfast

I have to admit that I got a bit carried away with the Vinfast dossier. Although Olivier Becht, the former Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade and Economic Attractiveness, did meet the Vietnamese manufacturer's directors during a trip to Asia in March 2023, Vinfast will not be setting up a factory in Europe for several years. The company has just started work on its American plant, but for the time being it will be content to export its cars from its Vietnamese plant to the European market. The Vietnamese manufacturer has also just announced a $2 billion investment to build a plant in India.

2. Samsung

As with Vinfast, I pointed out in last year's review that the Korean electronics giant, like its competitors, was considering the possibility of building a factory in Europe. If the project is not cancelled, it will not happen immediately. As revealed in June 2023 by the Korean business monthly BusinessKorea, Kyung Kye-hyeon, head of Samsung's semiconductor subsidiary, visited several European regions, including Munich and Stuttgart in Germany, Geneva in Switzerland, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Tel Aviv in Israel, to discover the local ecosystems. However, Samsung will not be building a factory in Europe in the short term. The company is already in the process of investing tens of billions of dollars to build semiconductor plants in Korea and the United States, and prefers to put its European plans on hold.

D. Summary table for 2023

France's results in 2023 in the competition for major industrial sites in Europe are mixed.

On the one hand, the trend is more positive than in previous years, with France winning more and more decisions on major projects. Of particular note is the mobilisation to win the Prologium, Novo Nordisk and Holosolis cases.

On the other hand, the defeat in the BYD and TSMC cases is a black mark on the picture, as these were the two most significant announcements of the year in Europe. No less than the world's No. 1 manufacturer of electric cars and the world's No. 1 chipmaker announced their first European plant this year, and neither chose France. What's more, these are new plants, unlike Novo Nordisk, which is an extension of an existing site.

There is also a risk factor to take into account: while BYD, TSMC and Novo Nordisk are well-established global industrial leaders, Prologium and Holosolis are young companies that have never yet built large-scale plants.

I produced a summary table of projects to conclude my study last year: here is the updated version.

I would add that it would have been artificial to add to this list the investments announced in 2023 by XTC/Orano in Dunkirk (€1.5bn for a battery components plant) and Carbon in Fos-sur-mer (€1.5bn for a solar panel plant): as far as the first project is concerned, there is nothing to indicate that Dunkirk competed with other European sites, and as far as the second is concerned, it is a French-owned company whose 3 shortlisted sites were located in France (no European competition).

2024 will be a busy year for major industrial sites in Europe: let's take a look at the 6 sites for which France is in the running.

You will also find a summary table for 2024 at the end of the following section.

II. 6 major industrial projects not to be missed in 2024

Several foreign companies have announced their intention to set up a plant in Europe requiring an investment of over €500 million. Among the most important projects, here are the next 6 plants that could be announced in 2024 and that France is competing for.

A. Moderna

This is a project that has been under discussion for several months and that I had already included in my study last year: the American company is in discussions with several European governments about setting up an ANRm technology plant in a European Union country. This is an opportunity for France to catch up: in June 2022, Moderna announced its first European plant in the UK, capable of producing 250 million doses of vaccine a year. 150 highly qualified jobs will be created. The laboratory will invest £1.1 billion, thanks to the British government's commitment to buy vaccines from Moderna for 10 years.

The latest news (interview with Stéphane Bancel, Moderna's French CEO, on BFM TV in September 2023, a French TV channel) is that Moderna intends to build its first EU plant in France. The CEO announced that Moderna had made a proposal to the French government. Negotiations are still underway, as Moderna would like the French government to commit to buying the plant's production over the long term, as it has done in the UK. This media appearance by the American company's CEO is therefore a way of putting the ball (and the pressure) in the government's court. The investment is estimated at €1 billion, and the project is "in advanced discussions with the French government", as Sandra Fournier, Director of Moderna France, told L'Usine Nouvelle in September 2022. This plant is crucial to French and European sovereignty in vaccines.

Negotiations between Moderna and the French government are likely to be tough, because while the US company's turnover has risen from $60m in 2019 to $19bn in 2021, it has fallen back to $6bn in 2023, following a drop in sales of vaccines against covid.

B. Tesla

Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, confirmed in June that discussions were underway and that several options were on the table. Elon Musk's presence at the latest Choose France summit in May 2023 and at the Vivatech trade fair in Paris in June 2023 would seem to confirm the Tesla boss's interest in France. On the occasion of the latter visit, he said that it was "very likely that Tesla will do something very important in France in the years to come". But be careful not to over-interpret: Elon Musk deliberately keeps things vague and regularly meets world leaders to discuss potential industrial investments (Italy, India, etc.). Nevertheless, this would be an opportunity for France to make up for the failure of 2019 when Tesla chose Berlin for its European gigafactory.

Although little is known about Tesla's next investments in Europe, 4 options are said to be on the table according to various articles in the European specialist press:

• a car assembly plant to complement the Berlin Gigafactory. Tesla would like a second European factory, and the Spanish press has revealed that Valencia is on the shortlist, along with the UK, Italy and France;

• an battery factory ;

• a megapack factory (an energy storage station made up of several high-power batteries), via its subsidiary Tesla Energy. Tesla already has a megapacktory in the United States and has just launched the construction of a similar plant in China;

• a solar panel factory, via its subsidiary Tesla Energy. It's not widely known, but Tesla is also a manufacturer of solar panels. France could be the site of a factory dedicated to the European market.

C. Skeleton Technologies

Skeleton Technologies is an Estonian company that produces high-power batteries used in transport (trains, trucks) or energy storage. The industrial start-up has raised €300m, has its first factory in Germany and counts Siemens among its shareholders and customers.

The company is now preparing to choose the location for its future €550 million European plant. 3 countries are on the shortlist: Germany, Finland and France. The sites under consideration in France are located in the Hauts-de-France region: if the decision is taken, it would be a new production site for the battery valley. The decision will be based on a number of criteria, including the price of land and energy, subsidies, and the presence of an ecosystem around the battery, as the company wants to attach an R&D centre to the factory.

Skeleton's CEO took part in the last Choose France summit, and last October he accompanied the Estonian Prime Minister on a trip to Paris on the theme of Franco-Estonian economic cooperation.

D. Alteo-Wscope

In November 2022, French alumina supplier Alteo and South Korea's Wscope announced plans to invest €600m in the Hauts-de-France region to build a plant to produce separator films (key battery components located between the cathode and anode) for electric batteries. The plant is intended to supply future battery gigafactories in the Hauts-de-France region. The location was to be announced in the following months, but there has been no news from the companies involved in the project for a year. According to the regional press, Valenciennes is one of the sites being considered, but it is in competition with foreign sites, particularly in the United States.

E. Umicore

Umicore, the Belgian materials company, is wavering between northern France and Belgian Flanders as the location for its future European plant for recycling electric car batteries.

The lack of manpower and land in Belgian Flanders and the length of administrative procedures could lead the company to choose France for this €500 million investment. Another crucial factor is the level of subsidy. The Flemish regional government has promised Umicore a subsidy of €55 million if the company decides to build the plant in Antwerp or Zeebrugge, i.e. 10% of the cost of the project. Yet France does not hesitate to offer subsidies representing 20 to 30% of the cost of a project. For example, the European Commission authorised the French government to pay a subsidy of €1.5 billion to the Taiwanese manufacturer to set up its first European battery factory in Dunkirk (Nord).

The Belgian manufacturer was due to make its decision at the end of 2023.

F. The European plant of a Chinese manufacturer

I'm not happy about the rise of Chinese carmakers: BYD, for example, has announced that it wants to "destroy the old legends of the automobile", targeting European brands in the process. I hope to see Renault succeed in its audacious industrial gamble: by creating the Electricity industrial cluster, Renault aims to produce 1 million electric vehicles in the north of France by 2030 (I talk about it here).

But I'm a pragmatist: just as Japanese and Korean manufacturers have done, Chinese manufacturers are going to make their mark on the European market. After the failure on the BYD case, France needs to win back one of these future production sites to avoid widening its automotive trade deficit. I'm thinking in particular of the 3 manufacturers who have announced their intention to build a plant in Europe: SAIC MG, Chery and Great Wall Motors.

The magazine Challenges recently revealed that the Chinese electric car manufacturer SAIC, which owns the famous British brand MG, could build its European plant in Eastern France, on the former Smart site at Hambach. But the competition is fierce: Spain, the UK, Germany and Italy are also in the running.

Chinese manufacturer Chery also wants 2 plants in Europe: one in the UK and one in the European Union. Spain, Germany, Romania, Italy and France are in the running. According to the Spanish press, the Chinese manufacturer is targeting the site of the former Nissan factory in Barcelona. A decision on the site is said to be imminent.

The third Chinese manufacturer interested in setting up a production site in Europe is Great Wall Motors. But France does not appear to be under consideration for the moment: the 3 countries under consideration are Germany, the Czech Republic and Hungary, according to a specialist European media outlet.

G. Summary table: €6.5 billion of investment and 5,500 jobs at stake

These 6 major industrial projects, the location of which should be decided in 2024, represent over €6.5 billion of investment and almost 5,500 jobs.

While certain levers are not in the hands of the government and local authorities, such as the presence of a pre-existing industrial ecosystem, public action can be decisive on a number of levels:

• availability of large plots of land that can be built on quickly ;

• the amount of subsidies ;

• a well-trained workforce ;

• and decarbonised, competitive electricity.

  

III. How to win these projects

Let's now look at the measures that have been and will be taken to attract these major industrial projects. We will see that while recent reforms have improved the country's attractiveness, not everything is yet in place to give us the means to win major industrial projects.

A. Measures have been taken...

1. The supply-side policy

The choice of a site for an industrial project is based on qualitative criteria (availability of land, infrastructure, quality of workforce, local ecosystem, relationship with public authorities, etc.) and quantitative criteria (level of subsidies, energy prices, cost and availability of workforce, level of taxation). The major groups have teams dedicated to new industrial projects: they analyse and compare each component of a country's attractiveness. Price competitiveness is one of the fundamental dimensions.

In the various comparative studies (or benchmarks) used by manufacturers, France's situation has improved overall in recent years, thanks in particular to reforms that are part of the "supply-side policy":

• Corporate tax rate reduced from 33% to 25% between 2017 and 2022;

• reduced labour costs (CICE reform);

• a €18bn cut in production taxes;

• labour market reforms ;

• and the recent reform of the vocational lycée, one of the aims of which is to address labour shortages in industry.

2. The Green Industry Act

The year 2023 saw the passing of the Loi industrie verte (Green industry act), which improved France's situation in an area where it was lagging behind: the time taken to set up industrial sites. The report entitled "Simplifying and accelerating the establishment of economic activities in France", submitted to the government in March 2022, showed that the average time taken to set up a factory was 8 months in Germany and 17 months in France.

The Green Industry Act has provided some initial responses. In particular, I would highlight 2 measures concerning large-scale industrial facilities:

• simplification of the environmental authorisation procedure to speed up the process of setting up new plants. Examination by the departments and by the environmental authority and public consultation will be carried out in parallel. The aim is to halve the time taken to issue authorisations, from 17 months today to nine months tomorrow;

• the creation of an exceptional simplified procedure for industrial projects of major national interest, enabling local town planning documents and regional planning documents to be brought into line more quickly, accelerated electricity connection procedures and the issuing of building permits by the State rather than by local authorities. This exceptional procedure will apply to projects for very large plants (gigafactories), which will be identified by decree.

At the same time, in response to the US IRA (inflation reduction act), the Finance Bill for 2024 introduces a green industries investment tax credit (C3IV) to attract industrial investment in wind power, photovoltaics, batteries and heat pumps. This was certainly a decisive factor in convincing the French group Atlantic to invest €150 million to build its new heat pump factory in Burgundy rather than in Poland.

3. Choose France summits: French-style soft power

The Choose France summits are proving to be an offensive and effective soft power tool, and it's The Economist that says so. In an article published in November 2023, the weekly explains that these summits in Versailles are an asset for France when it comes to winning major international industrial projects. When a CEO is hesitating between 2 countries for an investment project, face-to-face meetings with the President and the ministers concerned, assuring him that the authorities will support his project on all fronts (regulatory, financial and speed of execution), can tip the balance in the right direction.

In his November 2023 report Boosting foreign direct investment in the UK for the UK Treasury, former UK MP Richard Harrington also praises this soft-power policy, which seems to be winning over international investors: "A number of senior business representatives who spoke to the Review reported that their CEOs and Presidents were used to receiving texts directly from President Macron, being invited to the Palace of Versailles and having ‘the red carpet rolled out’. Investors reported that this type of relationship-building was an important element in their investment decision-making, taken as an indication of the level of commitment the UK government has to investment partnerships. An international conglomerate with a net worth of over $300 billion operating in over 150 countries said relationships were ‘critical’ to how they do business”.

Choose France is beginning to be identified as an important international business summit: I think that this tool should be maintained, even in the event of a political changeover.

B. But France's attractiveness still needs to improve

1. Threats to supply-side policy?

In an interview with Les Echos at the end of December 2023, Louis Gallois, whose eponymous 2012 report marked the beginning of the supply-side policy in France, warned of the very bad signal sent to industry by the reduction in tax relief on salaries from 2.5 to 3.5 SMIC (the minimum wage) enacted in the 2024 budget. This extra burden will weigh disproportionately on industry, which pays the highest salaries (above 2.5 SMIC): although it accounts for 10% of GDP, industry will pay 20% of the total amount of this cut in tax relief, or €140 million a year according to Louis Gallois. These recent decision can only worry French manufacturers. Meanwhile, the coalition in power in Germany has just decided to cut corporate taxes by €32 billion over 4 years, and the UK government has announced a €9 billion annual tax allowance on business investment.

Let's not forget that France is still a country that overtaxes its production base. Taxes on production remain at a very high level: after taking into account the new cuts in 2023 and 2024, the gap will remain around €30bn compared with the EU27 average and €60bn compared with Germany. The abolition of the Contribution de solidarité des sociétés (C3S) (€4bn) should be a priority: it has been described by the Conseil d'analyse économique (CAE) as "the most harmful tax to be abolished as a matter of priority". This tax on turnover "reduces the competitiveness of businesses, acting as a tax on exports and a subsidy on imports". According to the CAE, abolishing it could improve the manufacturing trade balance by €5 billion.

2. Land, administrative simplification, training, a dedicated ministry: the battle for reindustrialization is still far from won.

In his report on attractiveness submitted to the Prime Minister in December 2023, MP Charles Rodwell stresses the importance of legal certainty for investments. In the course of his work, the MP has, for example, "been confronted with dozens of situations, some of them bizarre, in which the administration's 'changes of foot' regarding the application of a standard or a decision have led to the abandonment of a project to set up or develop a business by French or foreign investors," says the report. It proposes extending the business location contract introduced in the Hauts-de-France region in 2017. In practical terms, this would consist of a contractual commitment between the State, the region and the host conurbation, for a period of five years, to provide investors with security in the development of their location or expansion project, within a pre-defined, stable and guaranteed legal framework (total stability of the local and national regulations applicable to the project, for a period of five years from the signing of the contract).

A law dedicated to administrative simplification, could give concrete form to these proposals in the first half of 2024.

The question of land is also a fundamental issue when it comes to attracting major industrial sites. Tesla and Intel set up in Germany partly because France was unable to offer large plots of land that could be built on quickly. France must not miss out on the next Tesla or MG/SAIC plant for this reason.

The "turnkey industrial sites" scheme has helped to speed up a number of sites, but land availability is not always up to date and France still does not have a sufficient stock of large plots of land that can be built on quickly. The government relaunched a survey of industrial sites in the autumn because of the urgency of the situation: a recent study estimated that France needs 20,000 hectares of industrial land by 2030 if it wants to re-industrialise.

To give concrete administrative form to the central role given to industrial policy, economist Christian Saint-Etienne proposes the creation of a powerful Ministry of Reindustrialisation, which would also be responsible for energy policy, innovation and vocational training. The recent attachment of energy to Econony minister is a first step.

3. Industrialists' concerns about making the most of the French nuclear fleet

At a time when carbon intensity is becoming a purchasing criterion for consumers and the price of energy is a key factor in investment decisions, France's electricity is among the most carbon-free (53 compared with 414 gCO2eq/kWh for Germany) and competitive in Europe in terms of production costs, thanks to nuclear generation. However, the agreement reached between the French government and EDF in October 2023 concerning the setting of electricity prices from 2026 onwards is a cause for concern for French industry. CLEEE, an association of energy-intensive companies, is denouncing "a major step backwards for French businesses": it anticipates a doubling in the average price of electricity compared with the current situation. What's more, the mechanism resulting from the agreement is designed in such a way that electricity prices in year n will only be known in year n+1 (retrocession mechanism), which means a loss of visibility for businesses, complicating investment decisions and budget planning.

Although Finance Minister is planning specific measures and encouraging the signing of long-term contracts between electricity-intensive industries or large-scale consumers and EDF, we will have to wait for the draft law intended to materialise the agreement between the State and EDF (1st half of 2024) to see more clearly.

Conclusion

After a mixed 2023 in terms of mega-plant locations in France, 6 major industrial projects representing €6.5bn of investment and 5,500 jobs will choose their location in Europe.

Attracting these mega-factories is part of the battle for reindustrialisation, which is still far from won: the weight of manufacturing industry in GDP in France has continued to fall, to 9.5% in 2022, compared with 14.8% in the eurozone and 18.4% in Germany.

These 6 projects are representative of the key industries of the coming decades: mRNA vaccines, batteries and electric vehicles. Attracting them would enable France and Europe to position themselves in the industries that will ensure our sovereignty and prosperity in 2030 and 2040.

Attracting 3 of these 6 projects would be a very good result for France:

• we can be optimistic about the Moderna factory: the company has stated that it wants to build its European factory in France and is awaiting a response from the government;

• Attracting Skeleton Technologies, Umicore and Alteo-Wscope would strengthen the ecosystem of the Battery Valley in northern France;

• Repeating the success of Toyota Valenciennes (the Japanese carmaker built a plant in northern France in 2001) by winning a Chinese car plant would consolidate French car production and reduce the automotive trade deficit, which has reached €20 billion by 2022;

• Finally, attracting a Tesla plant would be a prestigious victory, as Elon Musk's company is at the forefront of electric cars.

I also hope that many projects have slipped under my radar. We'll see if the next Choose France summit, due to be held in March 2024, brings any good news...

Study published in collaboration with the Le Millénaire think tank.

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Dear readers,

after the interview with historian Miho Matsunuma and our review of the book Lessons from Japan, let's continue our discovery of Japanese civilization with French photographer Pierre-Elie de Pibrac, whose exhibition Ephemeral Portraits of Japan is currently on show at the French National Museum of Asian Art in Paris until January 15, 2024.

The photographer spent 8 months immersed in Japan with his family. Far from a postcard picture, he wanted to gain a better understanding of the country by photographing everyday Japanese people in an approach akin to that of an anthropologist. As he explained to me, "photography is my alibi for getting to know a culture and a people".

This article is a selection of 5 photos from the 30 in the exhibition. I went to interview the photographer at the museum and, for 3 photos, I recorded his explanation to understand his work better (audio is in French).

1. The Salaryman

Salaryman is the term by which the Japanese refer to a company's non-executive managers or employees. More than a type of position or responsibility, the word designates a masculine lifestyle, in which work and co-workers occupy most of the salaryman's time and interests. Salarymen are expected to work long days with plenty of overtime and to participate in after-work activities, such as nomikai evenings. Salarymen are among the hardest hit by karōshi, death by overwork.

2. The evaporated

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A short announcement to start with: thank you for your very positive feedback on my conversation with the Lithuanian ambassador. I'll be doing interviews more regularly in the future.

Dear Readers,

special issue this week. As you may know, Ridley Scott's film about Napoleon is released on Wednesday. And since I’m French, it is my national duty to go and see it.

On a more serious note, I've often come across opinions and remarks about Napoleon in my readings. In this article, I wanted to bring together the ones I found most interesting. You'll come across historians, writers and politicians. But first, I'll give us a brief biography of Napoleon to refresh our memory.

Short biography of Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on 15 August 1769 in Ajaccio. He began a military career and quickly rose through the ranks during the French Revolution. After the Italian and Egyptian campaigns, he overthrew the Directoire government in 1799 in the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire and took power as First Consul. He consolidated the achievements of the Revolution, such as equality before the law, and launched major reforms, including the creation of the Banque de France, prefects, lycée and Napoleonic code.

In 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French, marking the beginning of the French Empire. Facing a coalition led by Great Britain, the Grande Armée began its conquest of Europe, of which the famous victory at Austerlitz in 1805 is one of the symbols (here a great video explaining this military masterpiece).

However, the campaigns in Spain in 1808 and especially Russia in 1812 marked the beginning of his downfall. After his defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, Napoleon was exiled to Elba island in 1814. He managed to escape and briefly returned to power during the Hundred Days in 1815, but was finally defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, which put a definitive end to his reign. The deposed emperor was exiled to the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, where he spent the last years of his life and dictated his memoirs. He died on 5 May 1821.

Considerations on Napoleon

I chose Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou, René Grousset and Jacques Bainville because I found their reflections on the Napoleonic era particularly instructive.

Georges Pompidou, President of France (1969 - 1974)

In August 1969, George Pompidou, who had just been elected President of France, traveled to Ajaccio in Corsica to celebrate the bicentenary of Napoleon's birth. He gave a speech in which he declared:

"The genius of Napoleon dominates our history just as he prefigures the future of Europe. It is to him that we owe most of the institutions which, over the centuries and despite the necessary changes, still form the backbone of our country. (...) Napoleon did not find happiness and he did not give it to France. But, in the absence of happiness, he reached the heights of greatness and filled France with it, to such an extent that since then our people have never resigned themselves to mediocrity and have always answered the call of honour".

This statement by Georges Pompidou should be read in conjunction with his own epitaph, written just after his election as President of France: "Happy people have no history, and I hope that historians will not have too much to say about my term of office". Breaking with Napoleon's quest for glory, Pompidou preferred to anchor his political action in a quiet quest for happiness, in line with the aspirations of the Trente Glorieuses.

René Grousset, Historian

René Grousset is one of my favorite historians. Died in 1952, he was a member of the Académie française and chief curator of the National Museum of Asian Arts in Paris (or Musée Guimet). In 1949, he wrote Figures de Proue in which he retraced the lives of several great historical figures such as Caesar, Charlemagne and Bismarck. One chapter is dedicated to Napoleon: the historian is not kind to the emperor. While he praises the statesman Bonaparte - "through his Code, his University, his prefects, Napoleon reigned in France until 1940" - he is highly critical of the conqueror: he criticises him for his romanticism and his great epics, which ultimately weakened France. Just as the country was emerging from a decade of revolutionary turmoil (1789 - 1799) and yearning for stability, Napoleon imposed a decade of war (1805 - 1815): "France was coming into port. He seized the ship and threw it back on the high seas". For Grousset, this thirst for conquest probably stemmed from his overly classical and Latin training: all his life, Bonaparte wanted to remake the Roman Empire. In this sense, Napoleon was very much a man of his time, obsessed with the Roman and Greek heritage. "We were brought up in schools of Rome and Athens" wrote the revolutionary Camille Desmoulins about the education he received at college (on this subject, see my article At the origins of Western Civilisation).

Jacques Bainville, historian

Jacques Bainville was a French historian and journalist best known for his Histoire de France, written in 1924 and still widely read today, and for The Political Consequences of Peace, a premonitory work published in 1920 in which he predicted the downward spiral leading to the Second World War. He also wrote a biography of Napoleon in 1931 in which he showed his admiration for the genius of the military strategist Bonaparte but deplored the megalomania of the end of the reign which erased the conquests and achievements of the beginning, i.e. the stabilisation of French society after the Revolution. Bainville wrote:

"Except for glory, except for art, it would probably have been better if he had not existed."

He uses a phrase that Napoleon is said to have uttered when visiting the tomb of Rousseau, whose Social Contract inspired the French Revolution: "Time will tell whether it would not have been better, for the rest of the world, if neither Rousseau nor I had ever existed". Despite his reservations about the Napoleonic era, Bainville could only observe that "the magic of the name Napoleon is one of the most astonishing phenomena in the history of the French people".

Charles de Gaulle, President of France (1958 - 1969)

"What Napoleon did until 1808 was perfect"

This is what the General is said to have said to the writer André Malraux. In Les Chênes qu'on abat, Malraux recounts his discussions with a de Gaulle at the end of his life, retired to his house in Eastern France. They talked about history, politics and literature. De Gaulle admired Napoleon but reproached him for the excesses that led to his final downfall. He should have been content with his initial successes. Like Napoleon, de Gaulle was a soldier who restored a national unity after a period of great turmoil. Like Napoleon, de Gaulle left an institutional legacy that has spanned the decades with his Fifth Republic. However, by resigning after a lost referendum, de Gaulle accepted to leave the office.

These two historical figures left France with historical epics to cling to. As historian Patrice Gueniffey explains: "Napoleon and de Gaulle left an even more important intangible legacy: a source of collective pride, a model of political efficiency, an example of courage, an illustration of the powers of the will and, with Napoleon's final failure, a philosophical lesson on the 'measure' essential to the government of men". More fundamentally, they gave unity to a country that initially lacked it. Unlike Germany, which shared a common language and culture even before it was unified by Bismarck, regions and cities as different as Flemish-speaking Dunkirk, German-speaking Strasbourg, Italian-speaking Nice, Catalan-speaking Perpignan and Occitan-speaking Toulouse had, a priori, no common destiny. As Patrice Gueniffey writes, "France cannot do without great men or heroes, any more than it can do without a strong state. They represent its unfindable unity". Before the Revolution, it was the king who played this unifying role. Afterwards, it was the State and the "great men" who took over.

Conclusion

Although they admired his initial successes and his administrative work, they all criticised him for his hubris. Napoleon was "defeated by his conquest", wrote Victor Hugo about the Russian campaign. His disproportionate ambition led to his downfall. The paradox is that it is this same overweening ambition that explains why he did not remain an anonymous lieutenant but became an extraordinary historical figure who we are still talking about two centuries after his death. He saw himself as a meteorite, and France was the tool with which he built his epic. He once wrote to his wife Joséphine: "I haven't had a cup of tea without cursing the glory and ambition that keep me away from the soul of my life".

So what are we to make of Napoleon's adventure? Let's leave the last word to Charles de Gaulle.

- “Where do you stand with the Emperor?” the writer André Malraux asked the General during a conversation a few months before his death.

- “A very great mind, and a rather small soul (...) He left France smaller than he had found it, that's fine; but a nation cannot be defined like that. For France, he had to exist. It's a bit like Versailles: it had to be done. (...) Just look at how little Napoleon's glory has suffered as a result of his defeats. Look at the power of his name, not just for the French. It stirs souls. Let's not bargain greatness”.

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Dear readers,

a few days ago I had the opportunity to interview Nerijus Aleksiejunas, Lithuania's ambassador to France since 2019. As a career diplomat, he was advisor to the President of Lithuania before arriving in Paris. I had previously met the ambassador at an event where he was presenting Lithuania's foreign policy. I was intrigued by the voluntarism and particular history of this country which is little known. So I asked for a meeting to find out more.

During our conversation, which was punctuated by personal anecdotes, we covered a range of subjects that gave me a better understanding of Lithuania, its people and its history: the daily life under the Soviet occupation, the success of Vinted and NordVPN or the historical links with Ukraine. I also understood why Lithuania is so active on the diplomatic front, standing up to China and Russia.

This issue of Why the West is divided into two parts: before the interview with the ambassador, I will briefly introduce Lithuania and its history.

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Lithuania, a small country with a big history

With a surface area of 65,000 km² (twice the size of Belgium) and a population of 2.8 million, Lithuania is the largest, most populous and most southerly of the three Baltic States. Its capital is Vilnius and the country shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east, Poland to the south and Russia (Kaliningrad enclave) to the west. The population is predominantly Catholic, and the 2 largest foreign communities are Ukrainian and Belarusian. The country's economy is geared towards innovation: one of the best-known Lithuanian companies is Vinted, the most successful second-hand apparel app in Europe.

The name of the country appears for the first time in 1009. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania began to flourish in the 13th century. It reached its apogee in the 15th century, when it became the largest state in Europe, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea: its territory included present-day Lithuania and a large part of Belarus, Ukraine and Poland. This is an important factor, and we'll return to it later. The country has a tradition of openness: in 1323, the Grand Duke of Lithuania invited European craftsmen and merchants to settle in Vilnius and also offered protection to the Jews. The Lithuanian Jewish community represented 10% of the country's population and included the famous painter Marc Chagall and the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. In the 16th century, Lithuania joined forces with Poland to form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. At the end of the 18th century, the Russian Empire annexed Lithuania. Except for the interwar period (1918-1939), the country did not regain its sovereignty until the collapse of the USSR in 1990. Lithuania has been a member of the European Union since 2004, and the euro has been its currency since 2015.

What distinguishes Lithuania is its willingness to defend Western values. For example, the Baltic country has not hesitated to offend China by authorising Taiwan to open a representative office in Vilnius in 2021. And despite the Chinese economic boycott, Lithuania has no intention of going back on its decision. Lithuania is also the 2nd country in the world (behind wealthy Norway) that gives the most support to Ukraine in proportion to its GDP.

As a complement, I recommend this 12 minute video from the French TV show Behind the maps: Baltic Countries, at the gates of war (in French with English subtitles available).

Interview with Nerijus Aleksiejunas, Lithuanian Ambassador to France

Guillaume Gau: Despite its modest size, Lithuania is very active diplomatically and does not hesitate to confront major autocracies. Is there any historical explanation for this state of mind?

Nerijus Aleksiejunas: First of all, Lithuania has a long tradition of statehood and diplomacy. In the 15th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest state in Europe: it was twice the size of today’s France. We have retained something of this "big country" mentality.

Recent history also explains this attitude. The end of the Second World War was not exactly synonymous with peace for Lithuanians: from 1940 to 1990, we suffered 5 decades of Soviet occupation. Until the end of the 1950s, Lithuanian resistance fighters fought against the Russian invaders: they were known as the Forest Brothers. They were hunted down by the KGB and took refuge in the dense Baltic forests. It wasn't until 1990 that we regained our independence. We know that freedom and democracy cannot be taken for granted: we have to fight to preserve them.

G.G. You were born in 1978, under Soviet occupation. In concrete terms, what does it mean to grow up in a country under a Communist dictatorship?

N.A. My family was devastated by Soviet oppression. From 1940 onwards, the Soviets deported thousands of Lithuanians to the Gulag in Siberia1. My grandfather was one of them: he never came back. He was deported 2 months before his son was born: my father never knew his father. My grandfather was deported because he was a civil servant: the Soviets wanted to behead the Lithuanian state.

In parallel with political repression, the Soviets tried to erase Lithuanian identity by rewriting history (the Grand Duchy of Lithuania disappeared from our history books) and doing everything they could to eradicate Christianity. For example, Christmas was a day like any other, not a public holiday. Displaying your religious beliefs could get you into trouble, so you had to be very discreet. But we have a long history and deep roots: 50 years of Soviet occupation were not enough to eradicate our identity.

On a daily basis, there were shortages and widespread corruption. For example, we were allowed 1 kg of bananas per person per year. I remember queuing for hours with my mother to get the precious bananas. Behind an egalitarian ideology, the injustices were blatant: the Soviet elite enjoyed privileges and knowing someone in a high position gave you a pass.

G.G. You've been in France for 4 years. How do you see the country?

N.A. I love the geographical diversity of your country. Sea, mountains, countryside: you've got it all. I also like the differences between your regions. And contrary to the cliché, I don't think the country is all that centralised: your regional capitals are very dynamic. I travel around the country a lot and I find the French very welcoming. Lithuanians also appreciate French culture and the French way of life. Some of your great authors have a link with Lithuania, like Romain Gary (his famous novel: Promise at dawn) who was born in Vilnius.

On the economic front, you have a very dynamic technological ecosystem. Our country is also very innovation-oriented and France represents a major market for Lithuanian start-ups such as Vinted and NordVPN. Finally, Franco-Lithuanian relations are going well. For example, Lithuania has just purchased 18 French Caesar cannons to bolster its army.

G.G. Why does Lithuania support Ukraine so strongly?

N.A. We have to stop Putin, otherwise he will keep moving forward. We have to show him that we won't give in. For Lithuanians, helping Ukraine means defending Europe, freedom and democracy. What's more, this support doesn't just come from the government: the whole of Lithuanian society is mobilising to welcome Ukrainian refugee families or send medicines. For example, a citizens' fund has just raised €14 million to buy military radars for Ukraine.

Historically, we also have a very strong relationship with our Ukrainian brothers. Our two peoples are very closely linked: Ukraine represented a large part of the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Cultural and economic exchanges between our 2 countries have been very strong for centuries.

G.G. As a wrap-up, would you have a Lithuanian book to recommend?

N.A. I recommend Vilnius Wilno Vilna by Kristina Sabaliauskaite, 3 short stories about the history and atmosphere of Vilnius. The title is composed of the Lithuanian, Polish and Yiddish names of the city. It is a great book to read before a visit to Vilnius. There's also Siberian Haiku, a comic book by Jurga Vilé and Lina Itagaki about the deportation of Lithuanians to the Soviet gulags. This book touched me because it talks about what happened to my grandfather.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out that 2024 will be the Year of Lithuania in France: hundreds of events will be organised across the country to introduce the French to our culture and history.

G.G. Thank you for this conversation, Mr Ambassador!

N.A. You are welcome. Come and visit our country, we know how to welcome people!

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Dear readers,

after the interview with historian Miho Matsunuma on the differences between Japanese and Western identity, let's continue our exploration of Japanese civilization with Les Leçons du Japon, un pays très incorrect (2019), a book by Jean-Marie Bouissou, French historian specializing in Japan. Married to a Japanese woman, he lived in the archipelago for 15 years and has published more than a dozen works on the country's history, culture and aesthetics.

In this book peppered with anecdotes, the historian reveals the different facets of the Japanese people, who are at once conservative and welcoming, tough and polite. Throughout the book, he compares Japan to France and the West to bring out the cultural particularities of Japan. The author explains that Japan is not a country that stands still, but changes take place gradually and without jeopardizing national cohesion. Without hiding its inner ills (the status of women and deaths in the workplace in particular), Jean-Marie Bouissou describes a Japanese society that is much calmer than our Western societies.

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While it would take too long to summarise the whole of this dense and detailed book, I would nevertheless like to focus on two chapters that particularly caught my attention:

• A tailor-made religion

• Preserving national cohesion

A tailor-made religion

The book answers a question I've often asked myself: what is Japan's religion? Monotheism has never taken root there: the archipelago has never known Islam, and Christianity was violently extirpated in the 17th century (on this historical episode, I recommend Martin Scorcese's magnificent film Silence). Japan is one of the few countries to have a religion it shares with no other people. It was born nearly 15 centuries ago from a combination of 3 elements:

1. Shintoism or "the way of the divine": the only indigenous element, it is a set of beliefs dating back to the origins of the country. Shinto is based on a quest for harmony with the ancestors and nature;

2. Confucianism: more a social morality than a religion, it was imported from China and aims for the stability of a harmonious society;

3. Buddhism: also originating on the mainland and arriving with Confucianism, it has been Japonised and takes charge of the rites and ceremonies associated with death.

This Shinto-Confucian-Buddhist combination, with its 3 perfectly complementary components, is unique in the world and ensures strong social cohesion in the country. On a day-to-day basis, a Japanese person can go to a Shinto shrine to ask for divine help in solving a personal problem, and then attend a funeral in a Buddhist temple. The author explains that this religious system, rooted in reality, is much more 'down-to-earth' than Christianity, a universalist religion marked by the quest for salvation.

Preserving national cohesion

"For the vast majority of the population, and almost the entire political and media class, it still goes without saying that Japan is a country of a special breed, a nation unto itself, whose culture, language and civilisation are like no other, and which draws its strength from its specificity" Jean-Marie Bouissou in Les Leçons du Japon.

For the author, this is one of the main 'politically incorrect' aspects of Japan. While mention of national identity or civilization may be perceived negatively in the West, it goes without saying in Japan. The country is very keen to preserve its culture, which is made up of hundreds of rituals and social codes that are often imperceptible and incomprehensible to foreigners. Young Japanese are taught to love their country. While "the right to be different" has become a cardinal value in the West, Japan places social cohesion above all else. Let's take two examples to illustrate this.

The first is the Japanese judicial system, a symbol of the primacy of society over the individual and made famous by the arrest and escape of Carlos Ghosn, the former CEO of Renault-Nissan. For example, police custody in Japan can last up to 22 days (2 days maximum in France), takes place in spartan conditions and 99% of those brought before the court are found guilty. From a Western perspective, this harshness may seem shocking, but it can be explained by the Confucian cultural context, in which any deviation from the rules is seen as an attack on society itself. It should also be remembered that Japan still practices the death penalty: 13 members of the Aum sect implicated in a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995 were hanged in 2018 (the expression "between tradition and modernity" is not a misnomer: Japan is one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world and yet executes those sentenced to death solely by hanging... The Shinkansen and the Gallows).

The second concerns Japan's migration policy. Despite its rapidly ageing population, Japan refuses to make massive use of foreign labour. And while it has agreed to grant a 5-year visa to 350,000 foreign workers in 2018, they are pre-selected before their arrival via examinations and come from culturally compatible (i.e. Confucian) countries such as China and Vietnam. Japan values its cohesion and does not want to suffer the same fate as the multicultural and multiconflicting societies of the West.

Conclusion: "and yet, Japan works".

"The Japanese seem to like themselves a lot better than we do, or at least put up with themselves".

Despite a declining population and numerous internal challenges, Japan remains the world's third-largest economy and its society is highly cohesive. With no unemployment, no cultural or ethnic divides, very little crime, high-quality public services and a determination to preserve a unique civilizational heritage, this very politically incorrect country escapes many of the ills of our societies. The historian invites us to take a greater interest in Japan, which has certain lessons to teach us.

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P.S. For my Parisian readers, I recommend the photo exhibition Portrait éphémère du Japon at the Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet (Paris XVIe) until 15 January 2024. Photographer Pierre-Elie de Pibrac spent a year immersed in Japan with his family to gain a better understanding of Japanese culture.

Dear readers,

I'd like to tell you about a book that has played a major role in my understanding of the importance of Greek heritage in Western civilization. Why Greece? (in French: Pourquoi la Grèce ?) was written in 1992 by Jacqueline de Romilly, an internationally renowned French academic who devoted her career to the study of ancient Greek civilization. She was a member of the Académie française and the first woman professor at the Collège de France. When she was a teenager, her mother gave her a book by Thucydides, one of the first Athenian historians and author of the famous History of the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century BC. She then became passionate about ancient Greek works and thought until she died in 2010. She was convinced that everyone should benefit from the "profound sense of the beauty of the world and the wonder of life" that she felt when reading Homer. Her work earned her the admiration of contemporary Greeks, who awarded her honorary Greek nationality in 1995. For those who are more curious, I can only recommend this documentary (in French with English subtitles) retracing her life.

In Why Greece? Jacqueline de Romilly answers this question: why do the texts of ancient Greece, from Homer to Plato, still speak to us and continue to influence the whole of European culture? For Jacqueline Romilly, it is "their exceptional effort towards the human and the universal" that has enabled these texts to survive the centuries and continue to move us. In so doing, she teaches us that the West owes two fundamental things to ancient Greece, and in particular to the Athens of the 5th century BC:

1. The invention of freedom

2. A taste for the universal

1. The invention of freedom

"The idea of freedom was born in Greece, where it was discovered and proclaimed with force, for the first time and in a lasting way"1

Consensual obedience to a law decided collectively and no longer to the will of a single man - that was the Greek innovation. The Greeks became aware of their specificity in the 5th century BC, during the wars which opposed them to the Persian Empire: they noticed that the Persians "obeyed an absolute sovereign, who was their master, whom they feared and before whom they bowed down", behavior that was hardly conceivable for them. The Persians were surprised by the Greeks, who were not fighting for a king, but for the freedom of their city. Jacqueline de Romilly sees here the birth of the Western ideal of defending freedom against absolutism: "Greece, confronting Darius, then Xerxes, thus defined in clear terms our European ideal".

For the Greeks, political freedom was inseparable from freedom of thought and expression. They bequeathed to Westerners the taste and habit of debate. In The Phoenician Women, a tragedy by the Athenian poet Euripides, Jocasta asks her son what is the most difficult thing about being an exile: "The worst of it, mother, is the fact that there is no free speech". And Jocasta agrees: "That’s a slave’s life, you’re describing, not to be able to speak freely".

In his speech Hommage à la Grèce (Homage to Greece), delivered in Athens on 28 May 1959, the French writer André Malraux summed up the revolution represented by the invention of freedom by the Greeks: “It was through the first civilization without a sacred book that the word intelligence came to mean questioning. The questioning that was to lead to the conquest of the cosmos by thought, of destiny by tragedy, of the divine by art and by man (...). Ancient Greece tells you: "I sought truth, and I found justice and freedom. I invented the independence of art and the mind. For the first time, I set man, who had been prostrate everywhere for four millennia, face to face with his gods. And at the same time, I set him up to face the despot.”

2. A taste for the universal

“The Greek heritage, founded on the aspiration to the universal, has become the very spirit of our Western civilisation.”

For Jacqueline de Romilly, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey is an epic that is different in that it is eminently universal. Anger, pity, tenderness or honor: the poet describes human feelings in a simple and timeless way. That's why this text still touches us, almost three millennia after it was written. For the French Academician, the entire human condition is already present in Homer. She gives the example of the scene in which the warrior Hector bids farewell to his wife and son before leaving to fight. At the moment of the difficult parting, the warrior and his wife are amused by the curiosity and fear that the warrior's helmet arouses in their child. To reassure him, his mother takes him in her arms "smiling through her tears", writes the poet. In this scene, which is one of the most moving in The Iliad, Jacqueline de Romilly sees the perfect example of the Greek poet's genius: succeeding in describing in a simple, beautiful and timeless way the complexity of human feelings - in this case, those of a woman torn between fear for her husband going off to war and laughter at her child's curiosity about her husband's helmet. This is undoubtedly why "Homer's heroes became lifelong companions, first in Greece, then in Rome, and now in every European country".

"Humanity is everywhere in this first epic (...) It is in its genius for reducing everything to the human condition and in its refusal to accept any ethnic or particularistic limitations. In this respect, the Iliad in fact inaugurates what will become our culture's desire for universality, and the openness to others that, unlike many civilisations, it places at the top of its list of values" Jacqueline de Romilly in Pourquoi la Grèce (1992)

This taste for the universal is also reflected in the search for general truths and an interest in other cultures. When the Athenian historian Thucydides analysed the reasons for the war between the cities of Athens and Sparta in The Peloponnesian War, he hoped to bequeath to mankind a lesson that would be "a possession for all time". 2,500 years on, he seems to have succeeded: in a recent book2 Harvard professor Graham Allison takes up his teachings to analyse the rivalry between the dominant American power (in the situation of Sparta) and the rising Chinese power (in the situation of Athens). He thus developed the concept of the Thucydides Trap, a situation in which war breaks out when an ascendant power challenges the hegemony of a hitherto dominant power.

Conclusion - My take

In Why Greece? Jacqueline de Romilly reminds us that we owe these two fundamental elements of Western identity: the quest for freedom and a taste for the universal (the latter reinforced by two millennia of Christianity). This practice of individual and collective freedom that characterises the Western peoples of today and is one of the reasons for their prosperity began more than 25 centuries ago in Athens. The Greeks also bequeathed us a taste for the universal, often for the better (openness and curiosity about foreign cultures, the quest for knowledge) and sometimes for the worse (lack of awareness of our own identity, the tendency to assume that the world shares our values). We have recently seen thanks to Japan that this taste for the universal... is not universal at all.

Of course, the Greeks were no angels. Like other peoples of their time, they sometimes broke the law, had slaves and democracy could turn into popular tyranny. But the academician concludes: "Nevertheless, the Greeks were at least able to say what should have been, to define values, and sometimes to die for them".

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Dear readers,

today we are going to focus on India, a 3,000-year-old civilization that has fascinated me for many years. The country is hosting the G20 summit this weekend, bringing together the heads of state of the world's 20 leading economies. Despite the numerous challenges it faces, the Asian giant is currently experiencing a symbolically prosperous period: with the moon landing of its Chandrayaan-3 probe, it has just entered the very exclusive club of countries having placed a machine on the moon (with the US, China and the USSR); its economy has become the 5th in the world, surpassing UK; and India is now the most populous country in the world with its 1.425 billion inhabitants, overtaking China.

The country has been led since 2014 by Narendra Modi, the leader of the BJP1 party (Bharatiya Janata Party or “Indian People’s Party”), the Indian right. Popular, he seems well on his way to being re-elected in 2024 for a third 5-year term. With India poised to take a leading position on the global stage in the decades to come, I wanted to better understand how Indian leaders see the world. This is why I read The India Way, Strategies for an Uncertain World, a book written in 2020 by Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, one of the most influential ministers in the Modi government. Diplomat with a prestigious career (he notably served as India's ambassador to China and the United States), Jaishankar has served as the country's Minister of External affairs since 20192.

The book offers an overview of the challenges India is facing in the 21st century and clarifies the goals of its ruling elite. Four main ideas can be identified:

1. Economic development: an absolute priority

2. The India time?

3. The relationship with China: the frenemies

4. The pride of a civilization: an India that is now more Bharat

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1. Economic development: an absolute priority

For the author, strengthening the Indian economy is a priority: the country wants to have the means to achieve its ambitions. An interesting point is the way in which the Covid-19 crisis is being treated: beyond the global health shock, the minister especially deplores its impact on the prosperity of the country. By slowing growth, the pandemic has slowed the pace of exit from poverty: “Many, not just in India, who would have otherwise come out of poverty will have to wait longer”. 415 million Indians emerged from poverty between 2006 and 2019 according to the UN but 10% of the population still lives on less than $2 per day. Modi has set a clear objective for the country: in 2047, for 100 years of its independence, India must be a developed and “poverty free” economy.

However, the author notes that economic emergence will be more difficult for India than for China: his country will not benefit from the level of openness of economic exchanges of the 2000s and 2010s which allowed China to multiply per ten its GDP per capita in 20 years (from $1,000/cap. in 2000 to $10,000/cap. in 2020). India will have to emerge into a more conflictual and less open world.

2. The India time?

“In dealing with the West, the Chinese often invoke a century of humiliation to justify their positions now. But if anybody should be complaining, it should be India which saw two – not one – centuries of rape and pillaging by Europe.”

After recalling the colonial era, S. Jaishankar devotes a significant part of his book to Indian nationalism. Regarded very negatively in Europe, the author sees, on the contrary, nationalism as the ideology which made it possible to free India from colonization. He affirms that nationalism is a positive force contributing to social cohesion and the influence of the country. The author insists: “a nationalistic India is willing to do more with the world, not less”. Indian nationalism, heir to an ancient and pluralistic civilization, is not synonymous with self-closure: for Jaishankar it is a positive force aimed at maximizing the capacities of a country to actively engage in international scene.

Regarding international relations, the minister advocates for a strategically autonomous India, not dependent on any alliance. Thus, even if the country is a privileged interlocutor of Westerners in Asia who see it as a counterweight to China, it continues to trade with Russia at the same time. It is the application at the diplomatic level of the concept of Atmanirbhar Bharat (autonomous India), promoted by Narendra Modi since his first election in 2014. The objective is to build a resilient economy tending towards self-sufficiency in key areas (military, pharmaceutical or food). It is also part of the Indian tradition: in 1909, under the British Raj, Gandhi published Hind Swaraj3, which could be translated as: “the fact of being one’s own sovereign”.

Note that France is seen as a faithful partner by the minister: beyond the recent sale of Rafales jet, the unfailing French support for the Indian nuclear tests of 1998 -allowing the country to acquire atomic weapons- has not been forgotten.

3. The relationship with China: the frenemies

“The ability of India and China to work together could determine the Asian century. Equally, their difficulties in doing so may well undermine it. Given this combination of promise and challenges, their ties are without doubt one of the most consequential relationships of our times.”

India and China are key players in the 21st century and the state of their relationship is of crucial importance to the future of Asia and the world. In the West, we are used to pitting the two Asian giants against each other, playing democratic India against authoritarian China. Certainly the minister does not hide the competition that exists between the two countries: China is a geopolitical and economic rival, as proven by the ban on Chinese applications in India (Tik Tok for example) or the recurring skirmishes at the Sino-Indian border. However he believes that if his country and China can come to an agreement, they could reduce Western influence and define new rules for organizing international relations.

4. The pride of a civilization: an India that is now more Bharat

“As Indians prepare for greater contributions, they must rely on their own traditions to equip them in facing a tumultuous world. That is certainly possible in an India that is now more Bharat4”.

India sees itself as a civilization-state and the author of The India Way encourages Indians to draw inspiration from their rich centuries-old heritage. He sets an example: to conduct foreign policy, the minister says he draws inspiration from the Mahabharata5, sacred text of Hinduism and great mythical story known to all Indians which plays in the country the role that the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Bible were able to play in the West. “The Mahabharata”, writes the author, “is indisputably the most vivid distillation of Indian thoughts on statecraft”: for example, he sees in the Bhagavad-Gita (the most famous part of the story in which a warrior hesitates to carry out his duty) an incentive “to implement key policies without being discouraged by the collateral consequences of the action.”

My take: the Indians want to make up for lost time

By finishing this book, we better understand the state of mind of Indian leaders: for the 21st century, they aspire to a prosperous India, proud of its civilization and playing a leading role on the world stage. This desire to make up for lost time is often mixed with a quest for recognition and sometimes a feeling of revenge. This determination and this strong civilizational consciousness contrast with a Europe tempted by degrowth and uncomfortable with its own cultural heritage.

For the author, the West should not have any illusions about its special relationship with India. If the Asian giant is building strong partnerships with the West and in particular with the United States, it is because the country today finds an advantage (technology transfer, economic development). But ultimately, the objective remains the autonomy of India and only the country's interests will prevail.

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Dear readers,

today we're looking at a Figaro Histoire feature (Le Figaro is the second-largest national newspaper in France, after Le Monde) dedicated to the Greco-Roman sources of Western civilization. Historians and specialists share their views on the importance of the Greco-Roman legacy to Western identity, and how the West is continually reappropriating this heritage. Lower down, you can find my full reading notes on this feature.

For those in a hurry, here are the 2 main takeaways:

1. Greco-Roman heritage and Christianity are the two major pillars on which Western civilization was built. Two millennia of dialogue between these traditions have forged the Western mental framework and worldview.

2. This Greco-Roman heritage is still very tangible, but it has become so natural to us that we sometimes no longer perceive it. Let's take two examples:

   • language: although the English language is not descended from Latin as the Romance languages are, about 60% of English words are of Latin origin due to borrowing. The French speak French because the Romans conquered Gaul. French is nothing other than Latin continued and transformed.

   • architecture: "Greece invented architectural orders, which, until the first half of the 20th century, were the basic syntax of Western architectural language". From the modest courthouse of a town to the British Museum, the architectural codes of our historic public buildings are largely based on those invented on the shores of the Aegean Sea over 2,500 years ago.

Below are my comprehensive notes on this feature from Figaro Histoire. But to start, enjoy this Superb 3D flyover of the Acropolis of Athens. Note the painted facades of the Parthenon and the temples (images by altair4.com):

In addition, I recommend reading my article on Jacqueline de Romilly's book 'Why Greece' on what the West owes to Athens:

Summary

1. What is the name of our civilization?

2. What we owe to Greco-Roman antiquity

1. What is the name of our civilization?

• Introduction by Michel de Jaeghere, journalist and historian

• we have received from Greece “the philosophy, the sciences, the canons of classical art, the sources of our letters, the framework of our institutions, our conception of history, our confidence placed in reason to decipher the book of Nature at the same time as to govern political societies, to substitute deliberation for the law of the strongest”

• we have received from Rome “the bases of our law and the practices of our justice, the foundations of our town planning, the development of our territories, the conception of our States and the model of our administrations; (…) most of our languages: with them, the way we think; to have been converted under his empire to the religion to which he gave his mode of organization and which for more than 15 centuries governed our morality and gave an ultimate meaning to our existence.”

• “From the Greeks, (...) the Europeans inherited the idea that there is a Good, a Beauty and a Truth accessible to consciousness and which, because they correspond to a fulfillment of the potentialities common to human nature, overlook the legacy of the past and therefore allow us to judge it, gauge it, prune it, as well as make room for foreign influences and innovations from elsewhere. They learned that if the tradition is venerable, it is up to it to be critical, unless it condemns itself to a sterilizing immobility (...)”

• “From Christianity (...), Europe drew its faith in the capacity for the improvement of the world, born of the will of divine omnipotence, and which had been given to it to share in order to understand it, to submit it and beautify it like a landscape garden. Hence the idea of progress, to which it was up to everyone to contribute through their initiatives, the invitation that the golden age was to be built in the future, more than to be regretted in the past. From there, the impetus towards the exploration of the planet, the will to civilize to the ends of the earth (“to undertake, to study, to provide diligent care, without sparing work, expense, dangers incurred until pouring one's own blood” according to the program fixed in 1493 by the pope to the Spanish and Portuguese navigators between whom he had shared the oceans). Hence, at the same time, the place given to questions, to the idea that the universe was governed by a creative Intelligence whose designs it was up to us to pierce.”

• “From the meeting of Greco-Roman and Christian traditions, their incessant meditation, their deep integration of being in the world, of facing our finitude and of finding reasons to live, to undertake, to build, was born the most extraordinary of the adventures of which history has been the theatre: the one which enabled Europeans to explore and conquer the earth without ceasing to be themselves, to give an unparalleled brilliance to works of art and spirit and to carry out the scientific revolution which has enabled us to master energy, to square space, to dominate time”

2. What we owe to Greco-Roman antiquity

An article by Alexandre Grandazzi, Professor at Sorbonne University's Faculty of Letters.

1. Romance languages

“The evidence is sometimes what is least visible: because it is there, it is not hidden, we do not become aware of it and we look elsewhere for what is in front of us”

French is nothing but Latin continued and transformed. It is the granddaughter of Latin (and daughter of the Romance languages). 85% of all French vocabulary is of Latin origin.

"If the Romans hadn't spoken Latin, we wouldn't speak French today."

2. Architecture: from Romanesque to neoclassical

Few areas where the Greco-Roman heritage is more visible than in architecture. Just walk around any European city

“Greece invented the architectural orders, which, until the first half of the 20th century, were the basic syntax of the Western architectural language”

Nobility of the Doric order, elegance of the Ionic order, profusion of the Corinthian order

Romanesque art arises from Roman art to express a spirituality of a new era.

Cupola: invented by the Pantheon in Rome. Had a great destiny in European architecture

3. Ancient statuary and Western art

"Because the men of Greco-Roman antiquity conceived the gods in their own image, they represented them with anthropomorphic statues, in a type of mimetic sculpture destined for a very long posterity."

4. The influence of antiquity on European literature, from Dante to Corneille and Goethe

Medieval and modern European literature: developed in a constant relationship of admiration and emulation with its Greek and Roman forebears.

Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Law: based on a meditation on Aristotle's Politics, Plato's Republic

5. Posterity of Roman law

Rome was the civilization of law par excellence. If all civilizations have experienced a development of legal norms to regulate society, it is in Rome that the law has taken on the greatest importance. For example, the drafting of the Law of the 12 Tables is the founding act of Roman written law.

6. Town planning and road network.

Having become Roman, the cities of Gaul were equipped with a forum, a temple and an aqueduct.

7. Institutions: democracy, republic, monarchy, empire

All the words that we use to designate the institutions that were and are the framework of European societies come from Greece and Rome.

An imperial dream that runs through all of European history.

8. History

Herodotus: the father of history. Precursor of Lévi-Strauss. Historical study has found some of these fundamental laws as far back as Herodotus:

• interdependence between customs, institutions and foreign policy of a country

• the distinction between immediate causes and root causes

• the idea that history is both the account of events and their explanation

9. Philosophy

Plato: clear style. Never jargon.

Stoicism and Epicureanism: 2 visions of the world promised a great future

10. Sciences

The great debt of Western science to Greek science. The great figures of the 3 scientific revolutions (Copernicus, Galileo, Newton): aware of walking in the footsteps of ancient predecessors

Concepts of latitude and longitude: come from the rediscovery of Ptolemy's Geography in the 15th century

The concept of geometric perspective: rediscovered by Pierro della Francesca in a passage from Euclid

The terms describing the essential operations of scientific reasoning are Greek: hypothesis, theorem, problem

11. Catholicism, a heritage of the Romans

Because the empire constituted a relatively uniform, urbanized and pacified space which gave the Christian religion an immense potential for expansion

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Dear Readers,

On this day of the Assumption, I'd like to talk to you about Christianity. In his book "Dominion, how the Christian revolution remade the world" published in 2019, British historian Tom Holland1 shows that today's Westerners don't realize how much they have remained Christian in their mentality, even though the majority of them are no longer believers. In this book, acclaimed by critics (The Economist, The New York Times), Holland explains how Christianity has largely shaped our Western morality, culture and mentality, and continues to do so, often unconsciously. To sum up his thesis in one sentence: while churches have emptied, today's Westerners are unaware that their mentality remains strongly imbued with Christian values.

This book challenged my vision of the place of the Christian heritage in Western civilization. We know that Western civilization was built on two main pillars: the Greco-Roman heritage and Christianity. While the Greco-Roman legacy is fundamental (forthcoming article on Why the West), Holland argues that the mentality of today's Westerners was primarily shaped by Christianity. If we are the heirs of Athens and Rome, it is above all the Church that has forged our values over the past two millennia. Secularism, rejection of polygamy, respect for the weakest, sexual morality: Christianity has largely defined what Westerners today consider natural and right.

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Through 4 key themes, we will set out the historian's arguments concerning the imprint of Christianity on Western mentality:

1. The separation of temporal and spiritual power

2. Rejection of polygamy

3. Male-female relations and the equal dignity of men

4. Ambivalence about one's own power

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