Happy Bastille Day! We're celebrating with the following excerpt from The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II by Gabrielle Hecht.
“France cannot be France without grandeur.”
—Charles de Gaulle
In June of 1940, German troops marched into France for the second time in less than thirty years. On June 17, Marshal Pétain announced that he would seek peace with Hitler. Charles de Gaulle launched the Resistance the following day in a broadcast from London. Thus began four years of opprobrious occupation and fractured resistance. In June of 1944, Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy to liberate a nation humiliated by defeat, ravaged by war, disgraced by collaboration, and only partly redeemed by resistance…
No wonder, then, that the nation expressed such enthusiasm when Zoé, its first experimental nuclear reactor, underwent a chain reaction in December 1948, only four years after the Liberation. This success, proclaimed one newspaper, was “a great achievement, French and peaceful, which strengthens our role in the defense of civilization.” The following year, scientists isolated France’s first milligram of plutonium. President Vincent Auriol paid Zoé a visit and solemnly declared: “This achievement will add to the radiance of France.”
“The radiance of France”—a phrase usually interchangeable with “the grandeur of France”—appeared regularly in many realms of postwar discourse. These two notions referred back to France’s glorious past, from the golden reign of Louis XIV to the “civilizing mission” of the empire. France’s radiance had taken a severe beating during the war, and decolonization threatened to hasten the decline. How could the nation regain its former glory? What would radiance or grandeur mean in the radically reconfigured geopolitics of the postwar world?
Technical and scientific experts offered a solution to these dilemmas: technological prowess. In articles, lectures, and modernization plans, experts repeatedly linked technological achievement with French radiance. Industrial, scientific, and technological development would not only rebuild the nation’s economy but also restore France to its place as a world leader. For the nascent nuclear program, “le rayonnement de la France” carried special punch: “rayonnement” means radiation as well as radiance.