cultural revival. As for the Maison du Maroc, the demonstrations of the
February 20th Movement in 2011 had no impact on the running of the
establishment or the residents' committee.

CONCLUSION

The four generations of Maghrebi students who have passed through the
CIUP have been deeply affected by the political ups and downs of their
countries. The Moroccan and Tunisian pavilions were, each in their own
way, receptacles for the political and social tensions of their respective
societies. From the pioneering generation of the interwar years, marked
by nationalism, to the struggle for independence, leftist protest and the
crisis of the Arabized education system, they have all left their mark on
the CIUP. The Moroccan and Tunisian houses were home to a significant
number of the elite who, after their studies, rose to important positions in
the political, economic and cultural spheres. From the Tunisian Noured-
dine Hached<sup>76</sup> to the Moroccan writer Tahar Benjelloun, an inventory
would not suffice to show the extent of the executives of the Maghreb
states who passed through the CIUP.

**Conflicts of Interest** The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this chapter.

<footnote n="76">⁷⁶ Tunisian ambassador and politician. He is the son of trade unionist Ferhat Hached, assassinated in December 1952 by the far-right colonial organization “La main rouge”.</footnote>
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<figure><img src="image_13.png" /></figure>
<figure><img src="image_14.png" /></figure>

# Going West: Indochinese Students and the Shaping of Identities at the Maison des Étudiants de l'Indochine, late 1920s-early 1970s

Sara Legrandjacques

The S.A.M.I.P.I.C. is (...) keen to help found a house for Indochinese students within the Cité Universitaire de Paris. The house, of which a photograph of the model is attached, will have 100 rooms. It has been designed to provide our young compatriots with the health, physical, moral and intellectual conditions they rarely find, due to their modest student resources and the promiscuity of the Latin Quarter. In this kind of League of Nations, our compatriots will be treated on an equal footing

<footnote>S. Legrandjacques (✉)
Institut Convergences Migrations, Institut d'Histoire Moderne Et Contemporaine, Paris, France
e-mail: sara.legrandjacques@gmail.com</footnote>
with the nationals of the above-mentioned nations. They would forge solid friendships that would later be strengthened by the bonds of confraternity.<fnref n="1" />

In June 1928, Luu Văn Lang, as vice-president of the Société pour l'amélioration morale, intellectuelle et physique des Indigènes de Cochinchine (SAMIPIC), sent a letter to various associations in French Indochina.<fnref n="2" /> In it, he promoted a lottery organized throughout the colony from Saigon, the urban center in the south of the Indochinese peninsula where SAMIPIC's offices were located. While part of the proceeds was used to finance the company's activities, the vast majority was earmarked for the construction of a university residence, not in the colony but in Paris, in the newly-built Cité Universitaire (CIUP) on boulevard Jourdan, in the fourteenth arrondissement.

Promoted here by a colonized elite from Southeast Asia, from 1927 onwards this project was supported by the French public authorities, assisted by colonial entrepreneurs active on the initiative committee. The Governor General of Indochina and the Governor of Cochinchina acted as intermediaries in the colony. All seemed united by the same objective: to improve the living conditions of Indochinese students in metropolitan France. Begun at the turn of the twentieth century, these imperial student migrations gained in intensity following the First World War. They were accompanied by the formation of student groups, some of which were dedicated to welcoming new arrivals, but which could also play a part in politicizing diploma candidates. This is the angle from which the metropolitan presence of Indochinese students has been analyzed by French and English-speaking historians. As early as the 1970s, Daniel Hémery included students in academic mobility in his study of the political radicalization of the Vietnamese diaspora between 1926 and 1939,<fnref n="3" /> as did Michael Goebel more recently in his work on Paris and

<footnote n="1">¹ Archives nationales (AN), 20090014/19: Letter from the vice-president of SAMIPIC, June 15, 1928.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² French Indochina, or Union Indochinoise since 1887, comprised five territories: one colony. Cochinchina, and four protectorates: Tonkin and Annam, previously part of the Annam Empire, Cambodia and Laos.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Daniel Hémery, “Du patriotisme au marxisme: l’immigration vietnamienne en France de 1926 à 1939”, *Le Mouvement social*, n°90, 1975, pp. 3–54.</footnote>
anti-colonialism.<fnref n="4" /> Scott McConnell, for his part, offers the first monograph entirely dedicated to students of French colonial Asia, retaining this political angle and concentrating, as David Pomfret did later, on the Vietnamese.<fnref n="5" /> On the other hand, current works tend to integrate the other communities that made up French Indochina, and increasingly link intellectual and political training of a youth aware of the stakes of colonialism, not limited to the Parisian capital.<fnref n="6" /> While studies on the reception of foreign students focus more on colonized populations,<fnref n="7" /> Jehnie I. Reis chose Paris and the CUP in 1930 to highlight the tensions between a “French idealism” of collaboration with the Indochinese, carried mainly by former Governor General Albert Sarraut since the 1910s,<fnref n="8" /> and the counterpoint rise of anti-colonialism and communism.<fnref n="9" />

<footnote n="4">⁴ Michael Goebel, *Anti-Imperial Metropolis. Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism*, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ Scott McConnell, *Leftward Journey: The Education of Vietnamese Students in France 1919–1939*, New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 1989; David M. Pomfret, “Colonial Circulations’: Vietnamese Youth, Travel, and Empire, 1919–1940”, in JOBS, Richard I., POMFRET, David M. (eds.), *Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century*, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 115–143.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ See our work, in particular: “Voies étudiantes. Pour une histoire globale des mobilités étudiantes en Asie coloniale (Indochine française-Inde britannique, années 1850-années 1940, PhD thesis in contemporary history, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2021, as well as Charles Keith, *Subjects and Sojourners. A History of Indochinese in France*, Oakland, University of California Press, 2024. On anti-colonialism and student surveillance, among other things, on a metropolitan scale: Vincent Bollenot, “Maintenir l’ordre impérial en métropole. Le service de contrôle et d’assistance en France des indigènes des colonies (1915–1945)”, PhD thesis in contemporary history, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2022.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ See in particular: Caroline Barrera, *Étudiants d’ailleurs. Histoire des étudiants étrangers, coloniaux et français de l’étranger de la Faculté de droit de Toulouse (XIXe siècle-1944)*, Toulouse, IFR Toulouse 1, 2007; Pierre Moulinier, *Les étudiants étrangers à Paris au XIXe siècle. Migration et formation des élites*, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011; dossier “Accueillir l’étudiant-e étranger-ère”, *Traverse. Revue d’histoire*, 1, 2018; Yamina Bettahar (ed.), *Universités et grandes écoles. Circulations internationales étudiantes et scientifiques d’hier à aujourd’hui*, Nancy, PUN - Éditions universitaires de Lorraine, 2020.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ On these issues, in addition to Daniel Hémery’s article cited above, see: Agathe Larche-Goscha, “La voie étroite des réformes coloniales et la” collaboration franco-annamite “ (1917–1928)”, *Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer*, tome 82, n°309, 1995, pp. 387–420.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ Jehnie I. Reis, “L’identité indochinoise en question: Idéalisme français et dissidences à la Cité Universitaire de Paris dans l’entre-deux-guerres”, *Migrance*, n°39, 2012, pp. 7–19.</footnote>
While Luru Van Lang’s letter emphasizes the CIUP’s international audience, placing Asians, Europeans and North Americans on an equal footing, recent historiography has focused more on the tensions between national and colonial identities among students from French Indochina during the interwar period. This article completes and deepens these reflections by placing the Maison des étudiants de l’Indochine (MEI) at the heart of its subject. The MEI is seen as both a tool and a stage for complex and antagonistic identity constructs over the long term, from the birth of the project in 1926–1927 to its name change to “Maison des étudiants de l’Asie de Sud-Est” in 1972. In so doing, we question the relevance of a World War II-induced rupture, underpinned by earlier work focusing on the interwar period, and highlight the changes and continuities at work in the era of decolonization and the Cold War. Questions of naming are by no means anecdotal, since the use of the term “Indochina students” from the late 1920s onwards underpins a broadening of the public recruited, not necessarily colonized but colonial in the broadest sense.

In order to offer a political and social history of the MEI, this chapter looks at all the players involved in its operation, and focuses on the capacity for action—or *agency*—of the residents themselves, and its limits. To this end, the archives of the CIUP available at the Archives nationales de Paris are invaluable, in particular the cartons dedicated to the Maison des étudiants de l’Indochine and then de l’Asie du Sud-Est (20090013/1042–1043; 20090014/19–21) and the residents’ admission files (20090013/591); they are occasionally supplemented by the archival collections of the Académie de Paris, which include files on the Maisons of the CIUP (AJ/16/7042). These sources are characterized by their diversity, combining organizational decrees, notarial deeds, local and imperial correspondence, board of directors’ reports, promotional documents, and press articles. The holdings of the General Government of Indochina, scattered between the Archives nationales d’outre-mer (ANOM) and center n°1 of the Archives nationales du Vietnam in Hanoi, complete these sources by taking the colony’s side, as the colonial authorities also produced documentation on the MEI. Last but not least, the archives of surveillance in mainland France, in particular those of the Service d’assistance et de contrôle des indigènes (CAI), also kept in Aix-en-Provence in the SLOTFOM collection, are crucial to understanding the political tensions associated with the Indochinese residence.
An imperial project, the MEI was born of a tangle of players with varied interests. Since its inauguration in 1930, it has welcomed both colonized and French students, while becoming a forum for the expression of both imperialist and anti-imperialist ideas. The interruption of its activities during the 1939–1945 war did not affect its mission of welcoming students in the immediate post-war period. However, the emergence of a Cambodian residence altered the trajectories of some students, while the MEI outlived the French colonial empire, the last witness to an imperialism that was struggling to give way to national and regional logics.<fnref n="10" />

## THE MEI: AN IMPERIAL GENESIS, 1926–1930

The years 1926–1927 were the starting point for the foundation of a Maison des étudiants de l’Indochine at the CIUP. This project was born against a backdrop of increasing international student mobility since the end of the Great War,<fnref n="11" /> including individuals arriving from the colonies. Although it is difficult to provide precise and regular statistics, there were 98 Indochinese students at the University of Paris alone in 1927, compared with 45 three years earlier.<fnref n="12" /> In 1930, the surveillance services counted 289 Indochinese students in France, including 130 in Paris, which far outstripped the next largest host cities, Bordeaux, Toulouse and Montpellier, with 31, 30 and 28 university recruits respectively.<fnref n="13" /> Against this backdrop of widespread growth, the question of how to accommodate Indochinese recruits arose: in Indochina, for example, the

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ This article is partly based on the translation and revision of Sara Legrandjacques, « L’Asie à la Cité internationale universitaire de Paris depuis 1950 », Dzovinar Kévonian and Guillaume Tronchet (ed), *Le Campus-monde*, édité par Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2022, pp. 167–184.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ On this subject, see in particular: Victor Karady, “La migration internationale d’étudiants en Europe, 1880–1940”, *Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales*, n°145, 5/2002, pp. 46–60; Pierre Moulinier, *Les étudiants étrangers... op.cit.*</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² Scott McConnell, *Leftward Journey... op.cit.* pp. 52–53.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ Archives nationales d’outre-mer (ANOM), SLOTFOM, III/28: *Récapitulation générale des élèves et étudiants indochinois, 1930-1931*. For an analysis of the geographical distribution of students, see: Sara Legrandjacques, “Voies étudiantes... op.cit.”, pp. 514–515.</footnote>
families of educational migrants sometimes alerted the colonial authorities to the difficult living conditions of their descendants.<fnref n="14" /> However, it was from the French capital that the Association mutuelle des Indochinois (AMI), created in November 1920 and receiving government subsidies,<fnref n="15" /> approached the Minister of Public Instruction, Édouard Daladier, in 1926 on these issues and presented him with its plans for the development of an “Indochinese house”<fnref n="16" />.

A few months later, the imperial recovery of the project was launched: an initiative committee was formed at ministerial instigation in the summer of 1927. This time, the Minister of Colonies, Léon Perrier, in agreement with André Honnorat, president of the CUP national foundation, and the Governor General of Indochina, Alexandre Varenne, appointed a French entrepreneur, Auguste-Raphaël Fontaine, to head the committee. Fontaine had founded and managed the Société des Distilleries de l'Indochine, based in Hanoi since 1901. Fontaine's appointment confirms the economic stakes involved in colonization, even in its educational aspects, while at the same time attesting to the desire to place the pavilion in the hands of a potential manager and financier rather than a politician. Seven other members supported him in his task: five were French, all from the world of colonial entrepreneurship, and they were joined by the Saint-Cyrien native of Cochinchina, Đỗ Hũu Chan, and two representatives of the General Association of Indochinese Students (AGEI), Trần Văn Đôc and Đỗ Đức Ho.<fnref n="17" /> From this point onwards, a desire for collaboration between colonizers and colonized was visible, echoing the associationist policy advocated since the 1910s. This collaboration was nonetheless asymmetrical, both in quantitative terms and in terms of the representation of the peninsula's local populations: the minority Indochinese members of the initiative committee were all Vietnamese, depriving Cambodians and Laotians of a voice.

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ See the individual files of scholarship holders held in the Indochina General Government collection at ANOM.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ AN, AJ/16/7042: Courrier du ministre de l'Instruction publique, January 20, 1926.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ AN, AJ/16/7042: Courrier du directeur de l'Enseignement supérieur, conseiller d'État, pour le ministre de l'Instruction publique, au recteur de l'académie de Paris, January 20, 1926.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ AN, 20090014/19: Letter from A.R. Fontaine to M. Branet, secretary of the Cité universitaire de Paris at the Sorbonne, August 3, 1927.</footnote>
The summer and autumn of 1927 were devoted to drafting the deed of gift that would give birth to the MEI. Support and interest from the Indochinese diaspora in mainland France continued to grow. Between September 19 and 23, 1927, the first Congress of Indochinese students in France was an opportunity to express the wish for a House for the most disadvantaged:

> Voeu n° 9 - Considering that the creation of an Indochinese House within the Cité Universitaire in Paris is of high social importance, that this House is of real help to poor Indochinese students who are currently condemned to being unable to receive higher education in France, that these compatriots must be helped, that only they should be allowed to benefit from the advantages of the Cité Universitaire, the Congress declares that the students who are in France have a duty not to go there –[sic] to make room for the comrades who have remained in Indochina for lack of means to come to the Metropole and stay there, asks the government to grant them suitable scholarships while admitting them to the Cité Universitaire to the exclusion of all others.<fnref n="18" />

However, the committee's ultimate objectives, as set out in the founding deed of October 14, 1927, were quite different. A building with around a hundred rooms was to be built within three years for “all Annamite, Cambodian and Laotian students, regularly enrolled in one of the faculties of the University of Paris, or studying in Paris for higher education of any kind whatsoever, it being understood that this expression will be interpreted in its broadest sense. (...)” but also “all French students born in Indochina or belonging to a family domiciled in Indochina and meeting the same conditions”.<fnref n="19" /> If places remain vacant, “Indochinese professors, scholars and academics coming to Paris to do complementary work and research” and, as a last resort, “French students designated by the Fondation nationale pour le développement de la Cité universitaire and preferably chosen from among those doing studies on Indochina” can also be accepted.<fnref n="20" /> In short, the voice of Indochinese students already in

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ ANOM, Gouvernement général de l'Indochine (GGI), dossier 51527: Courrier du Congrès des étudiants indochinois au GGI, December 12, 1927.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ AN, 20090014/19: Notarized deed for the founding of the Maison des étudiants de l'Indochine, October 14, 1927.</footnote>

<footnote>Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Ibid.</footnote>
France was not really heard. Above all, it's a desire to mix and thus create links between the French and Indochinese that shines through here.

Validated by the Rector, construction was officially launched on July 11, 1928, following a groundbreaking ceremony. Fund-raising had begun at the end of the previous year, revealing the same imperial mix as well as the colony's geo-economic reality. The project was financed by a call for subscriptions throughout the French colonial empire. By December 1927, 786,700 francs had been raised, and by April 1928 the figure had risen to over 940,000 francs.<fnref n="21" /> By this date, 106 individuals and companies had donated money. Colonial entrepreneurship once again dominated, with some forty firms, most of them based in Indochina, such as Société des charbonnages de Ninh-Binh.<fnref n="22" /> More than 80% of individual subscriptions were made by French people, but a few Indochinese—exclusively Vietnamese—made their own, generally more modest, financial contribution. The economic domination exercised by the French should not, therefore, mask the investment of the colonized elite. In Cochinchina, SAMIPIC donated over 2,000,000 francs. It brought together around a hundred patron-members, all men from Cochinchina, who multiplied initiatives such as promotional mailings and the organization of evenings and lotteries relayed in the colonial press<fnref n="23" /> in order to raise a substantial sum.

A desire for Franco-Indochinese collaboration was evident from the very beginning of the project, and the MEI was also an opportunity to showcase and promote it in a variety of ways. The official ceremonies, first in 1928 and then in 1930 for the inauguration, were attended by both French and Indochinese personalities. In 1928, Fontaine, Honnorat, Varenne, Perrier, Charlety, rector of the Paris academy, and Trần Văn Đôc were among the speakers. The young emperor of Annam, Bảo Đại, himself educated in France, attended the event and signed the minutes launching the work.<fnref n="24" />

<footnote n="21">²¹ AN, 20090014/19: List of subscriptions for the foundation of a house for Indochinese students in Paris, 1928.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² *Ibid.*</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ See for example: “La Kermesse de Rachgia”, *L’Écho annamite*, May 4, 1942.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">²⁴ Speeches and photographs are available in: Comité de la maison de l'Indochine (1928) *La Maison des Etudiants de l'Indochine: à la cité universitaire de Paris*, Paris, Comité de la maison de l'Indochine, 1928.</footnote>
What's more, the architecture of the pavilion, designed by Pierre Martin and Maurice Vieu, is nothing less than a representation of this alliance between France and its Southeast Asian possession. Western and Asian elements mingle, as in the upturned roof edges. The garden, meanwhile, is "pleasantly arranged in the Asian style<fnref n="25" />". The interior design was not left to chance either: the banquet hall was inspired by Vietnamese palaces, while a painting by Lê Phương, an Indochinese artist trained at the Indochinese and Parisian Écoles des Beaux-Arts, adorned the walls of the ping-pong room.<fnref n="26" />

## (ANTI-)IMPERIALIST USES, 1930–1939

The student residence that opened its doors on boulevard Jourdan in 1930 thus took on a strong imperial, if not imperialist, dimension. It was to be a meeting place for France and Indochina, through the intermediary of its occupants. Under no circumstances was it to be likened to a pavilion reserved for colonized South-East Asians, and its recruitment mixed French citizens and colonized subjects from the very first months of operation (Table 8.1). What's more, in 1930–1931, six French students from mainland France were recommended by the Fondation Nationale and welcomed at the MEI. The recruitment of residents erased the demographic imbalance typical of exploitative colonies, in which a minority exploited a numerically majority indigenous population. Indeed, while Indochinese recruits were more numerous between 1930 and 1933, a turning point was visible in the following year. Between 1934 and 1936, the proportion of Indochinese residents fell, and by 1935–1936, they accounted for just one-third of boarders. This French takeover of the MEI's rooms was all the more surprising under the leadership of Roger Bauduin de Belleval, whose appointment as head of the pavilion in 1932 was to help make the MEI more popular with Indochinese students. The effects of the Great Depression, less favorable to distant study stays and the granting of financial support, and the reforms affecting

<footnote n="25">²⁵ Extract from articles published at the time of the MEI's inauguration quoted in: Brigitte Blanc, Philippe Ayrault, *La Maison des étudiants de l'Asie du Sud-Est*, study published by the Île de France region, 2015, p. 12. On the architecture of the house, see also: Jehnie I. Reis, "L'identité indochinoise en question... art.cit.", p. 12.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶ Brigitte Blanc, Philippe Ayrault, *La Maison des étudiants de l'Asie du Sud-Est...*, op.cit., pp. 7–12.</footnote>
<table><caption>**Table 8.1** Origins of MEI residents, 1930–1936<sup>29</sup></caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>1930–1931</th><th>1931–1932</th><th>1932–1933</th><th>1934–1935</th><th>1935–1936</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Indochinese residents</td><td>51</td><td>67</td><td>74</td><td>47</td><td>36</td></tr><tr><td>French residents</td><td>45</td><td>39</td><td>33</td><td>64</td><td>71</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>96</td><td>106</td><td>107</td><td>111</td><td>107</td></tr></tbody></table>

higher education in Hanoi, with the organization of full-fledged medical and law schools, are hypotheses to be taken into account. At the same time, the frequent delays in payment denounced by the board of directors may work to the disadvantage of individuals from Southeast Asia.<sup>27</sup> In July 1935, MEI management and André Honnorat called for a “reorganization of assistance measures for Indochinese students<sup>28</sup>”.

However, the admittedly patchy statistics compiled by the Maison's administration also reveal the weakness of applications for admission until the last years of the 1930s (Table 8.2): the imbalance seems to be due not only to a lack of willingness to accept colonized people—or to favoritism towards French candidates—but also to weak demand on the part of the Indochinese themselves. While French applications were constant, albeit more numerous in the early months of each academic year, no Indochinese applications were received in December 1935, January 1937 or May 1937. It wasn't until January 1938 that the number of applications equaled—or even exceeded, as in May and October 1938—those from non-Indochinese students. In this context, financial constraints must be taken into account, but perhaps also the avoidance strategies of an institution deeply marked by the colonial and imperial fact, already confirmed by the archives for the years 1930–1932.

Sharing rooms at the MEI with Europeans in a rarely balanced way, Indochinese students came primarily from the Vietnamese provinces of the peninsula. When MEI's first director, Lévecque, drew up a list of

<footnote n="27"><sup>27</sup> AN, AJ/16/7042: Comptes rendus de conseil d'administration, 1936–1937.</footnote>

<footnote n="28"><sup>28</sup> AN, AJ/16/7042: Compte rendu, July 1935.</footnote>

<footnote n="29"><sup>29</sup> Table based on data available in: AN, AJ/16/7042. These data are incomplete. When data were available for several months of the same year, we systematically chose the earliest month in the academic year.</footnote>
<table><caption>Table 8.2 Applications for admission to MEI, 1934–1938³⁰</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>1933-1934</th><th>1934-1935</th><th>1935-1936</th><th>1936-1937</th><th>1937-1938</th><th>1938-1939</th><th>1939-1940</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>By Indochinese students</td><td>5</td><td>2</td><td>6</td><td>9</td><td>9</td><td>29</td><td>17</td></tr><tr><td>by non-Indochinese students</td><td>19</td><td>1</td><td>33</td><td>50</td><td>6</td><td>30</td><td>13</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>24</td><td>3</td><td>39</td><td>59</td><td>15</td><td>59</td><td>30</td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote n="30">³⁰ Table compiled from data available in: AN, AJ/16/7042 and based on the addition of all available statistics for each academic year. No complete monthly statistics are available.</footnote>
residents in May 1931, it was not only the presence of 36 Frenchmen that was noteworthy, but also the predominance of Vietnamese surnames among the colonized recruits.<fnref n="31" /> No Cambodian or Laotian surnames appear, while one Indian is designated by the name Mariadafsou.

In this context, it remains difficult to determine the extent to which students from French Indochina voluntarily shunned the pavilion that was, at least in part, intended for them. As early as 1928, the MEI was the target of anti-imperialist criticism and action. Reticence was expressed in the student press: the *Journal des étudiants annamites* targeted the president of the AGEI, Trần Văn Đôc, for his participation in the MEI organizing committee. His speech at the laying of the foundation stone was reproduced in the newspaper's columns, followed by an open letter by two resigned AGEI members, Huỳnh Văn Phong, until then vice-president of the association, and Phan Văn Chánh, bearing a triple accusation:

> Before you, compatriots, we accuse the President of the A.G.E.I. of having failed in his duty as an Annamite and as a representative of our students.

> We accuse him of using the voice of all the students to spout flattery for his own benefit.

> We accuse him of violating Article II of the A.G.E.I. bylaws by using the Association's Bulletin to propagandize for a political party.<fnref n="32" />

The collaborationist attitude of Trần and his entourage was denounced. The MEI residence embodied this pro-French attitude, while the broader aim was to mobilize Annamite youth, whom the two letter-writers were trying to rally to anti-colonialism. In this way, the MEI crystallized the political divisions of the Vietnamese community in France in the late 1920s. The radicalization of some of its members is clear when Huỳnh and Phan declared:

> Annamite youth want to have a clear attitude towards France.

<footnote n="31">³¹ AN, AJ/16/7042: List of residents. It should be noted that a study of the geographical origins of the residents is now possible thanks to the declassification of the files, kept at the Archives nationales in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine for several years, following the ANR Global Youth project led by Guillaume Tronchet: https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-17-CE28-0005.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³² ANOM, SLOTFOM, V/1: *Journal des étudiants annamites*, n°11, October 15, 1928, p. 17.</footnote>
Annamite youth has little understanding of Franco-Annamite collaboration as long as Annam remains under the yoke of French colonialism. They reject with disgust the constitutionalist doctrine, utopian, childish, unworthy of a balanced mind, a doctrine of concessions, of half-measures, of the appearance of progress which lulls the Annamite people into dangerous illusions in order to fatten the intellectual bourgeoisie which has formed under the aegis of the Bui Quang Chiêu from *l'Impartial interview*.<fnref n="33" />

Two years later, the inauguration of the Indochinese pavilion confirmed this radicalization, corresponding to a peak in anti-colonial agitation in a context of tensions that went beyond the question of welcoming students. The repression of the Yên Bárty mutiny on February 10, 1930, led to political mobilization in Paris, taking advantage of official and public events such as the ceremony organized at the CIUP on March 22, 1930. Despite preventive checks and arrests by the French authorities, sometimes even inside the MEI,<fnref n="34" /> far-left demonstrators gathered near the building. Above all, the ceremony itself was disrupted, as *La Presse coloniale* reported in an article dated March 26, 1930:

> After Messrs A.-R. Fontaine, (...), Branet, Charlety, Barraud, Minister of Public Instruction, and Piétri, Minister of the Colonies, had spoken, Mr. Nguyen Van Bau, boarder at the Maison, was about to begin his speech, when two of his compatriots, seated in the room, stood up and shouted loudly: 'Don't listen to this traitor; he has no right to speak in our name'. Then, to the astonishment of those present, they projected a number of leaflets calling for the release (sic) of the indigenous people recently sentenced following the savage rebellion at Yen-Bay, and of all political prisoners in Indochina.<fnref n="35" />

<footnote n="33">³³ *Ibid.* Bùi Quang Chiâu was one of the founders of the Constitutionalist Party in 1923. This party supported the implementation of reforms within the framework of Franco-Annamite collaboration, supported at the time by the French left. The aim was to move gradually towards autonomy, along the lines of the British *dominions*. The party was particularly active in mainland France from 1925-1926.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴ During the ceremony, five students were arrested inside the MEI and nine outside: ANOM, SLOTFOM, III/16: Manifestation des étudiants indochinois à l'inauguration de la Maison des Étudiants Indochinois, 1930.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵ Georges Boussenot, “C’en est assez!”, *La Presse Coloniale*, March 26, 1930, n.p.</footnote>
The immediate arrest of the declaimers, who were taken to the police station, did not put an end to the political and identity-related tensions surrounding the MEI.<fnref n="36" /> Its first months of activity were troubled by tenacious anti-colonial mobilization, underlining the radicalization of members of the Vietnamese diaspora and, by extension, the division of this community. In the spring of 1930, the AGEI began boycotting the new residence, with the aim of luring new arrivals to Paris away from the rooms on boulevard Jourdan.<fnref n="37" /> By early April 1930, 15 new arrivals in metropolitan France had withdrawn their applications to the MEI.<fnref n="38" /> The communist and anti-colonialist press in mainland France, whether French, Indochinese or associated with other territories of the empire such as Tunisia,<fnref n="39" /> relayed the criticisms already mentioned of the colonial and collaborationist nature of the Maison. Support extended beyond the student world itself: on March 24, 1930, Indochinese sailors based in Marseille wished to congratulate the organizers of the March 22 actions at the CIUP.<fnref n="40" />

Paradoxical as it may seem if we bear in mind its initial objectives, it was also within the MEI that tensions were expressed. As early as 1930, it was not only students who were won over by—or indifferent to—collaboration with the French colonial power that were enrolled. In April, some eighteen boarders, including a Laotian, submitted a petition in defense of the Yên Batty convicts<fnref n="41" />. At the end of the year, divisions among the pavilion’s occupants were expressed in the election of the residents’ committee. There were two opposing lists: the first was presented as the “official list” and led by Nguyễn Văn Bau, regularly denounced by

<footnote n="36">³⁶ The event was reported in the French press, and not without a political stance. See: Jehnie I. Reis, “L’identité indochinoise en question… *op.cit*.</footnote>

<footnote n="37">³⁷ ANOM, SLOTFOM III/16: Désiré’s report, April 4, 1930.</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ *Ibid*.</footnote>

<footnote n="39">³⁹ ANOM, SLOTFOM, III/16: Copy of articles from *Le Cri du Peuple* and *La Voix de Tunisie*.</footnote>

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ ANOM, SLOTFOM, III/16: Courrier du délégué du service de contrôle et d’assistance en France des Indigènes au directeur des Affaires politiques du ministère des Colonies, March 25, 1930.</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ ANOM, SLOTFOM, III/16: Courrier du résident supérieur au Tonkin, July 24, 1930.</footnote>
his opponents as an “anti-Annamite, excluded from the milieu of patriotic students<fnref n="42" />”; the second, known as the “youth list”, strongly criticized Nguyễn Văn Bau’s position and ultimately won the most votes. The spy reporting on this electoral campaign to the French surveillance services on December 17, 1930 states that “in Annamite circles it is said that the failure of the official list is due (sic) to the presence of NGUYEN VAN BAU at its head, this native being accused of loyalty to France<fnref n="43" />”.

These remarks confirm the presence of residents with anti-colonialist ideas within the very walls of the MEI. Communism was spreading: in March-April 1931, incidents against director Lévecque attested to this, notably when some students sang *the Internationale* as he passed.<fnref n="44" /> The sanctions taken by the management seem insufficient, even if they might extend beyond the walls of the CIUP. In addition to sneaking into residents’ rooms to break up gatherings deemed dubious,<fnref n="45" /> Lévecque warned the parents of rebellious students and collaborated with the Sûreté and Préfecture de Police. Despite this, he was unable to prevent the young people he welcomed from taking part in political meetings, usually held in the Latin Quarter. While the change of director calmed the situation, revolutionary students continued to be welcomed at the MEI: on February 12, 1932, ten were under surveillance because they were communists or sympathizers.<fnref n="46" /> However, no documentation is available for the rest of the decade.

## A SLOW REBIRTH OF IDENTITY, 1945–1972

Although the Second World War interrupted MEI’s hospitality activities, they resumed in the immediate post-war period, despite a particularly turbulent geopolitical context in Southeast Asia. In March 1945, the French had lost political and administrative control of Indochina

<footnote n="42">⁴² *Ibid.*</footnote>

<footnote n="43">⁴³ ANOM, SLOTFOM, III/16: Désiré’s report, December 17, 1930.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ ANOM, SLOTFOM, III/16: Note dated April 23, 1931.</footnote>

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵ These untimely irruptions were accompanied by the redistribution of rooms in order to avoid contacts deemed bad. They concerned not only colonized students, but also Frenchmen from Indochina, such as Grenès, who was “under the influence” of Lan. André Lan was himself a Frenchman from Indochina, studying law at the École libre de sciences politiques: Anom, Slotfom, III/16: Note of April 23, 1931.</footnote>

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ ANOM, SLOTFOM, III/16: Désiré’s report, February 12, 1932.</footnote>
following a Japanese coup. The defeat of the Japanese a few months
later led Communist leader Hồ Chí Minh to proclaim Vietnam's inde-
pendence on September 2, 1945, although this was not recognized by the
French, who wished to reassert their presence on the peninsula. Tensions
were also palpable in Laos, where anti-colonial activists were supported
by neighboring Vietminh forces, while King Norodom Sihanouk maneu-
vered cautiously to bring negotiations for Cambodian independence to a
successful conclusion.

In Paris, the MEI seemed to pay little heed to this ongoing decoloniza-
tion. The High Commission for Indochina, successor to the Government
General, financed its activities. It continued to welcome Cambodians,
such as Say Maw and Sévy Luu Theug, who arrived in October 1946,
as well as Vietnamese and Laotians, more numerous than in the interwar
period. Recent access to residents' admission files for the whole of the
CIUP should make it possible to clarify profiles and trajectories by
measuring, on the one hand, the weight of the French and, on the
other, the precise origin of the Vietnamese, probably belonging to South
Vietnam still closely associated with France. From 1949 onwards, when
the Indochina war had already been raging for three years, the associated
states of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, attached to the French Union,
a federal organization inherited from the French colonial empire, also
became providers of funds.

At first, the MEI seemed to support France's desire to maintain its
presence and influence in Southeast Asia, in contrast to the assertion of
national identities and sovereignty in former colonies. However, a foun-
dation project emanating from the Kingdom of Cambodia shook this
dynamic. Already mooted by King Norodom in 1948, it took shape
two years later. The creation of the Maison du Cambodge (MCAM) was
announced in the decree of February 1 1950, presented by the President
of the Khmer Council of Ministers:

(...) Article 1. - Her Royal Highness Princess Ping Penang Yukanthor,
Vice-President of the Assembly of the French Union in Versailles (France),
is appointed by the Royal Government of Cambodia to represent it in
France in all operations relating to the construction, fitting out and
furnishing of a Maison du Cambodge at the Cité Universitaire de Paris,
and in particular to notarize, on behalf of this Government, the deed of
gift to the Cité Universitaire de Paris of a sum of six million francs, to be
paid to the Fondation Nationale of this Cité, and intended to constitute a
reserve and working capital fund for the purposes set out above.<fnref n="47" />

Although the mention of the French Union referred to the political ties
between the two countries, this new project remained more Cambodian
than French:

Which [Princess Ping Peang Yukanthor], after declaring that Cambodia
wishes to be associated with the work of intellectual and moral rapproche-
ment between the young elites of all nations pursued by the Cité
Universitaire de Paris and to provide students whose parents live in
Cambodia with the means to pursue their studies in Paris, has (sic) decided
to have a student house with one hundred and fifty rooms built on the
grounds of the Cité Universitaire de Paris and equipped.<fnref n="48" />

The foundation had a national character: the board of directors was to be
chaired by a “Khmer personality appointed by His Majesty the King of
Cambodia or his delegate”, and the French members were to be joined
by “three Cambodian personalities<fnref n="49" />” also appointed by the sovereign.
The chosen architecture, designed by Frenchman Alfred Audoul, blended
neoclassical Western elements with references to Khmer heritage and
culture, such as the statues of the monkey god Anuman framing the
exterior staircase.<fnref n="50" />

The MCAM was inaugurated in 1957 and led to a veritable Khmer
desertion of the MEI, even though Cambodia had become an indepen-
dent state in November 1953. The story of Phalcun Samair bears witness
to this: born in Phnom Penh on April 3, 1932, he first attended the
Lycée Sisowath in the Cambodian capital, before moving on to the Lycée
Descartes in Paris, where he obtained the mathematics *baccalauréat*.<fnref n="51" /> In
1951, he decided to pursue his medical studies in Paris and applied to

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷ AN, 20090014/40: “Founding Act, February 1st 1950”.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ *Ibid*.</footnote>

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ *Ibid.* On the origins of MCAM, see also: Michel Chai Sirivuddh, *La Maison du Cambodge*, Paris, Saint Honoré Éditions, 2016, pp. 13–41.</footnote>

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ “Découvrir la Maison du Cambodge”, *Cité internationale universitaire de Paris*, website: https://www.ciup.fr/presentation-de-la-maison-du-cambodge/, accessed February 27, 2023.</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ AN, 20090013/591: Phalcun Samair.</footnote>
the MEI, which accepted his application in October. He left the pavilion in July 1952 and returned in October 1953, before leaving again in 1956. However, for his third university stay in Paris, starting in October 1957, he chose to join the newly inaugurated MCAM. From that date onwards, although in theory "Cambodian, French and other nationals<fnref n="52" />" had access to the Foundation, 85% of places were *de facto* reserved for Khmer residents, admitted on the recommendation of the Royal Ambassador of Cambodia. Available statistics do not mention the presence of young people from other territories of the former French Indochina. In addition to the diplomatic relations underpinning this foundation, which resulted in several official visits by the Khmer head of state Norodom Sihanouk in 1964 and 1967, the Cambodian state also wanted to be present and visible on the international scene, since the director of the MCAM was also Cambodia's permanent delegate to UNESCO.

From the 1950s onwards, as the CIUP entered its second phase of expansion, the Cambodian split increased the opportunities available to certain South-East Asian residents. In 1952, Vietnamese student Tinh, enrolled at the Faculty of Science in Paris, was housed at the Maison des étudiants arméniens.<fnref n="53" /> However, neither the definitive and official disappearance of French Indochina in 1954 following the Geneva Accords, nor the Khmer foundation that became a reality three years later, led to a change in the name of the MEI, an anachronistic vestige of French Asia. The first discussions on this subject did not take place until May 1968. On November 6, 1969, the name "Maison des étudiants du Laos et du Vietnam" was adopted. The admission of twenty Vietnamese and sixteen Laotians among the 44 new recruits<fnref n="54" /> reinforced this "bi-state", less unitary approach. In addition, internal tensions between the two communities complicated the running of the Maison, for example in terms of room allocation and the organization of cultural activities. These tensions can be explained by a tendency on the part of certain members of the administration to promote Vietnamese residents, which was quickly countered: in January 1970, two members of the MEI Board of Directors had to be replaced. Until then, all board members had been French. While

<footnote n="52">⁵² AN, carton 20090014/40: Founding deed.</footnote>

<footnote n="53">⁵³ AN, 20090013/591: Tinh.</footnote>

<footnote n="54">⁵⁴ The remainder of the incoming workforce is made up of eight French nationals: AN, 20090014/20: Conseil d'administration du 6 novembre 1969.</footnote>
some of them thought it “perhaps opportune to call on a Vietnamese after having made contact with the ambassador, Phạm Đăng Lâm, who was in charge of the Consulate General<fnref n="55" />”, others were radically opposed, pointing out “the antinomy between Laotians and Vietnamese” but also “the threats hanging over South Vietnam”, engaged with the United States in a long war against Communist North Vietnam. In the end, two Frenchmen, the ethnologist of Southeast Asia Condominas and Prefect Aurillac, joined the MEI administrative team.

In contrast to the promotion of national identities, it was still French influence in Asia—albeit more diplomatic than political—that seemed to motivate the existence of the Lao-Vietnamese pavilion. Geopolitical realignments in Southeast Asia made a thorough reorganization of the residency's operations essential, especially as traditional support is drying up. Economic partnerships, previously linked to a strong French entrepreneurial presence on the Indochinese peninsula, were tending to disappear. The Quai d'Orsay was refusing to lend its support, and subsidiaries from the Vietnamese and Laotian governments were dwindling. Against this backdrop, the administration opted for continuity, by maintaining French governance. The MEI was attached to the Fondation nationale de la Cité universitaire and remained distant from its national Asian counterparts, the MCAM and the Maisons du Japon and de l'Inde:

> However, I would make it a condition that the French character of the House be more clearly asserted; as the current title of the House can be misleading and lead people to believe that it is a binational House, I would prefer that the House henceforth take the name of “Université de Paris - Maison française de l'Asie du Sud-Est.<fnref n="56" />

This positioning did not prevent students staying at the Maison from promoting and defending a national and political identity, in this case communist: during the Vietnamese cultural week organized from June 23 to 29, 1969, a Vietnamese national flag was hung in front of the main hall. Its removal, demanded on June 27 by the director of the Fondation nationale, was opposed by residents, while the closing ceremony

<footnote n="55">⁵⁵ AN, 20090014/20: Board meeting of January 15, 1970.</footnote>

<footnote n="56">⁵⁶ AN, 20090014/20: Board meeting of June 2, 1970.</footnote>
was disrupted by far-left militants, this time French and North African, exclaiming “tam-tam Hồ Chí Minh<fnref n="57" />”, or “vive Hồ Chí Minh”.

Even so, the degree of politicization of the residents of the Maison des étudiants du Laos et du Vietnam remains difficult to grasp in the archives. The debate between greater regionalism—around Southeast Asia—and the maintenance of a Vietnamese-Laotian specificity<fnref n="58" /> continued into the early 1970s. The name “Maison des étudiants de l’Asie du Sud-Est” (MEASE) was finally adopted in 1972, when a dozen Southeast Asian students from countries other than Laos and Vietnam joined the new arrivals. Four reasons were given:

- a) the previous name gave rise to an unfortunate “psychological shock” for most Vietnamese and Laotian students.

- b) far too long, it was reduced in practice to “Maison du Laos et du Vietnam”, which is precisely the name that had been abandoned earlier.

- c) the name “Southeast Asia” is the closest to the original name (Maison des Étudiants de l’Indochine).

- d) students from all the countries of Southeast Asia now come under this House, as a result of the intermingling that has taken place.<fnref n="59" />

In 1971–1972, out of 145 residents, only 74 were Asian nationals, including 37 Vietnamese and 27 Laotians.<fnref n="60" />

## CONCLUSION: AN IMPOSSIBLE REGIONAL IDENTITY?

At the turn of the 1990s, the Maison des étudiants de l’Asie du Sud-Est was the setting for a number of scenes in Régis Wargnier’s film *Indochine*, recounting the adventures of a French family specializing in the colonial rubber plantation between 1930 and 1954, seemingly as a nod to the residence’s colonial past. However, the Asian-inspired architecture and decoration of the pavilion, whose grand salon was renovated

<footnote n="57">⁵⁷ AN, 20090014/20: Board meeting of November 6, 1969.</footnote>

<footnote n="58">⁵⁸ In 1970–1971, only Vietnamese, Laotian and French students were admitted. On June 22, 1971, the proposed name “Maison des étudiants français, lao et vietnamiens” was presented to the Board of Directors: AN, 20090014/20: Conseil d’administration du 22 juin 1971.</footnote>

<footnote n="59">⁵⁹ AN, 20090014/20: Board meeting of January 13, 1972.</footnote>

<footnote n="60">⁶⁰ AN, 20090014/20: Boards of Directors, 1972.</footnote>
in 2014, should not mask the deeper erosion of its Indochinese identity since the 1970s. The opening of the pavilion to a more varied public, including Thais, Chinese, Koreans and people from other continents, has been accompanied by the disappearance of Vietnamese and Laotian residents. From 29 in 1977–1978, almost three years after the reunification of Vietnam in April 1975, they dropped to 14 in 1982–1983, before being completely absent from the Maison’s rooms by the end of the 1980s. Finally, at the end of the twentieth century, the MEASE seemed to be Asian in name only, with a majority of French nationals among the new admissions, a far cry from the internationalism dreamed of by the vice-president of SAMIPIC in 1928.

The 1970s also marked a turning point for the Maison des étudiants du Cambodge. It closed its doors in 1973 for some thirty years, following clashes between different groups of Khmer students that echoed the civil war that had been raging in Cambodia since 1967, culminating in the Khmer Rouge regime in 1975. Its rehabilitation at the beginning of the twenty-first century could now provide the basis for a sociological and socio-historical study of its new residents.

In short, the history of the Maison des étudiants de l'Indochine reflects the political, geopolitical, and cultural entanglements that characterized the Southeast Asian peninsula from the interwar period to the final decades of the Cold War. It underlines how the reception of foreign students constitutes a political lever and tool, both for the host country and for the country of origin, including students from (former) colonial possessions, still little considered by historians of education and international relations. These degree candidates must be seen as central players in the structuring of these university residences, participating in their smooth running—or their dysfunction—in the midst of other individuals and organizations.

From the 1970s onwards, this imperial dynamic gave way to a broader regional approach, not hesitating to go beyond the very borders of South-East Asia with the arrival of East Asian students, both Chinese and Korean. The latter have become a major target of the CIUP's attractiveness policy, confirming that the history of the Asian presence on boulevard Jourdan is as fluid as it is diverse and complex, and thus continues to be written at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

**Conflicts of Interest** The author has no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this chapter.
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# From the Maison de la France d'Outre-mer to the Résidence Lucien Paye or How an Empire Unravels: From the French Union to Cooperation

Françoise Blum

It is not a question of building an administrative monument, but of constructing a vast home where students destined to become the executives of our greater France will be welcomed in an environment of material and moral comfort worthy of them.<fnref n="1" />

In recent years, the history of African students around the world has been enriched by a number of valuable new studies. These include a recent issue of the journal *Diasporas*, Pedro Monaville's work on

<footnote n="1">¹ Paul Coste-Floret, Minister for Overseas France, Laying the foundation stone for the Pavillon de la France d'Outre-mer, AN, 20090014/221.</footnote>
Congolese students in the world<fnref n="2" /> and Burleigh Hendricksson's work on transnational student activism.<fnref n="3" /> We hope to contribute to this history of African students by approaching it from the specific angle of their place of residence in Paris. The “little story” we'll be discussing here, that of the Maison de la France d'Outre-mer (FOM) at the Cité universitaire de Paris (CIUP), now the Résidence Lucien Paye, can be seen as an excellent observatory of a “bigger story”. Through the history of this House and the study of the conditions of its foundation, its statutes, its residents, the composition of its Board of Directors, and the events that have marked its existence, the end of an Empire and the renegotiation of ties between France and its former African colonies can be seen at a micro-level, but in a very concrete way. We can also read about the ups and downs of the student movement, from its rise to prominence in the 1950s–1960s through to the heyday of 1968, leading to a number of gains followed by a return to control by the institutional powers that be. This resumption of power was both a “backlash” in the early 1970s and, in the very specific case of the FOM, the liquidation of a post-colonial situation, as well as the introduction of an unequal policy of cooperation. This is also the story of “university diplomacy”, as Guillaume Tronchet puts it, when it joins the mainstream of diplomacy.<fnref n="4" />

As with all CIUP buildings, there are archives at.<fnref n="5" /> However, they are somewhat sparse, due to a number of factors: one concerns the serious management problems experienced by the house and, at times, the total disorder that reigned in its administration, making the preservation of archives very uncertain; the other factor relates more to global events, as we cannot really be surprised by the absence of documents concerning the

<footnote n="2">² Monaville Pedro, *Students of the world: global 1968 and decolonization in the Congo*, Durham and London, Duke University, 2022.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Hendricksson Burleigh, *Decolonizing 1968: Transnational Student Activism in Tunis, Paris and Dakar*, Cornell University Press, 2022.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ TRONCHET Guillaume, “Diplomatie universitaire ou diplomatie culturelle? La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris entre deux rives”, in KÉVONIAN Dzovinar and TRONCHET Guillaume (eds.), *La Babel étudiante. La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (1920–1950)*, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013, pp. 59–88; TRONCHET Guillaume, *Savoirs en diplomatie. Une histoire sociale et transnationale de la politique universitaire internationale de la France (années 1880-années 1930)*, thesis in contemporary history, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2014.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ Archives nationales, Archives de la Cité universitaire, Résidence Lucien Paye (AN, 20090014/221-239).</footnote>
hot months of 1968. At the time, we had other things to think about than
rigorous administration. However, these “archival gaps” do not in any
way prevent us from understanding the transformations of the Maison de
la FOM since its creation, and following the broad outlines of its evolution,
as well as constructing an account of the events that took place there. This
is the purpose of the following lines.<fnref n="6" />

THE ORIGINS: TRAINING MANAGERS
FOR “THE GREATEST FRANCE”

The birth certificate of the Maison de la FOM was the proposal made on November 14 1946 by the Education Department of the Ministry of Overseas France<fnref n="7" /> to build a pavilion for overseas France at the CIUP, and to allocate a twenty million francs credit from the FIDES budget (Fonds d'Investissement pour le Développement Economique et Social des Territoires d'Outre-mer) for studies on the project. The minister in office at the time, the socialist Marius Moutet, approved this proposal, which had nothing to do with chance. In 1946, the Empire became the French Union,<fnref n="8" /> and the former subjects became citizens.<fnref n="9" /> In the same year, the FIDES WAS created to finance two successive plans. Of course, no development policy can do without an education policy. In 1946, education in

<footnote n="6">⁶ This article is a modified and translated version of: “De la Maison de la France d’Outre-mer à la Résidence Lucien Paye ou comment un empire se défait”, in D. Kévolian, G. Tronchet (dir.), *Le Campus-Monde. La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris, 1945-années 2000*, Rennes, PUR, 2022, p. 143–166.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ In 1946, the Ministry of Overseas France replaced the Ministry of Colonies. Marius Moutet was the first Minister for Overseas France.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ The French Union was created by the Constitution of September 1946 in the following terms: “France forms with the overseas peoples a Union based on equality of rights and duties, without distinction of race or religion. The French Union is composed of nations and peoples who pool or coordinate their resources and efforts to develop their respective civilizations, increase their well-being and ensure their security. Faithful to its traditional mission, France intends to lead the peoples for whom it has assumed responsibility to the freedom to administer themselves and to manage their own affairs democratically, rejecting any system of colonization based on arbitrariness, it guarantees to all equal access to public functions and the individual or collective exercise of the rights and freedoms proclaimed or confirmed above.”</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ Lamine Gueye Act of May 7, 1946. For the content of this new citizenship, see: COOPER Frederick, *Français et Africains? Être citoyen au temps de la décolonisation*, French ed. Paris, Payot, 2014.</footnote>
France's African colonies was brought into line with that of metropolitan France.

Up until the Second World War, a very Malthusian attitude prevailed in education policy in the colonies, whose elites were to serve essentially as auxiliaries to the French, without ever acquiring a high level of education, which was reserved for nationals of metropolitan France. The war, and the new international order it spawned, changed all this, and metropolitan France set out to make up for its considerable backwardness. In 1950, when the Institut des Hautes Études was founded in Dakar, there were still no universities in France's African territories, and only a few privileged students went on to study in metropolitan France.<fnref n="10" /> In 1946, the only way to pursue higher education was to enroll in an institution in mainland France. This was when the problem of housing arose. There was as yet no specialized organization to guide students from sub-Saharan Africa or point them in the right direction for housing. The Office des étudiants d'Outre-mer (OEOM)—which became the Office de coopération et d'accueil universitaire (OCAU) in 1962¹¹—was only created in 1955. The decision to set up a Maison d'Outre-mer at the CIUP reflected a certain realism in the face of a new situation that called for emergency solutions, as well as a policy of prestige and metropolitan influence among the future executives of “la plus grande France”.

On April 8, 1947, André Honnorat, President of the Fondation nationale de la CIUP, awarded the Ministry of Education a plot of land within the CIUP itself, for the planned construction.<fnref n="12" /> On April 15, the FIDES steering committee allocated the requested credit.<fnref n="13" /> On June 16, the Minister called on Albert Laprade, chief architect of the national palaces, to erect the pavilion. Not unimportantly, Albert Laprade had colonial experience. In Morocco, he was Henri Prost's assistant to Lyautey, and in this capacity had worked in Casablanca. He was also architect and project manager for the Palais de la Porte Dorée, built for

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ The first university in the French African empire was founded in Dakar in 1957.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ On OEOM-OCAU, see GUIMONT Fabienne, *Les Étudiants africains en France (1955-1965)*, Paris, L'Harmattan, 1998.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² “Convention portant donation à l’université de Paris et création de la Maison de la France d’Outre-mer. Acte notarié d’acceptation de la donation par l’université de Paris”, January 1949 (AN, 20090014/221).</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ Letter from Colonial Governor Félix Martine to Monsieur le Ministre de la France d'Outre-mer, Paris, March 5, 1949 (AN, 20090014/221).</footnote>
the 1931 colonial exhibition. The Palais de la Porte Dorée undoubtedly shares a strong family resemblance with the Maison de la FOM.

The process leading to the creation of the Maison de la FOM continues. In November 1948, the Minister for Overseas France, Paul Coste-Floret, after obtaining the agreement of the University of Paris and the Fonda-tion nationale de la CIUP, decided to create a propaganda committee and a board of directors for the future house. These two bodies are responsible for raising the necessary funds from the French overseas terri-tories and carrying out the construction. A Governor of Overseas France, Félix Martine, was seconded as General Secretary of the Propaganda Committee and Board of Directors. Félix Martine, appointed Secretary General of the Government of Madagascar, was replaced in March 1951 by Governor Raoul Angammare, who was himself appointed Governor of New Caledonia a few months later, and in turn replaced by Union Française advisor André Bougenot (November 1951). Nevertheless, it was Félix Martine who did most of the work, with the first students arriving in October 1951.

The members of the steering committee, the propaganda committee and the board of directors are of particular interest here. Here we have a true snapshot of overseas France, with a hint of national education, at the time of the genesis of a new world: that of the French Union. The steering committee of the<fnref n="14" /> propaganda committee includes a majority of representatives from the Ministry of Overseas France (Paul Coste-Floret, Minister; Carcassonne, his Chief of Staff; Félix Martine, former Governor; Robert Delavignette, Governor and Director of Political Affairs at the Ministry; Georges Gaston, Inspector General of Education and Youth at the Ministry of Education), representatives of the Ministry of Educa-tion (Yvon Delbos, Minister; Jean Sarrailh, Rector of the Paris Academy), as well as Edwin Poilay, General Manager of the Bank of West Africa, Louis Loriot, President of the Financial Section of the Council of State, and Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux, Advisor to the French Union. In addition to the aforementioned Martine, Sarrailh, Carcassonne and Delavignette, the company's Board of Directors included Louis-Paul Aujoulat (former Under-Secretary and Secretary of State for Overseas France), Marcel de Coppet (Governor General of the Colonies, who was Governor of Mada-gascar during the 1947 insurrection), Pierre Donzelot (Director General

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ “Comité de propagande pour la création de la Maison de la France d'Outre-mer” (AN, 20090014/221).</footnote>
of Higher Education at the Ministry of National Education), André Postel Vinay (Director of the Caisse Centrale de Coopération Économique), and finally two personalities from the CIUP, André Lirondelle (General Delegate) and Raoul Dautry, former Minister of Reconstruction and Urban Planning, who succeeded André Honnorat as President of the Fondation Nationale in early 1948. Last but not least, Léopold Sedar Senghor, Member of Parliament—and former resident of the CIUP—is the only African in this pleiad of administrators.<fnref n="15" /> It should be noted that this cohabitation between Éducation nationale and France d'Outre-mer was more or less forced: the two ministries did not always coexist peacefully, especially at a time when it was necessary to build school and university structures in Africa that obeyed the standards of Éducation nationale, standards that were sometimes far removed from those of France d'Outre-mer and its improvised civil servants-teachers.<fnref n="16" />

Under the leadership of Governor Martine, the propaganda committee had no trouble raising the funds needed to build the Maison de la France d'Outre-mer. Donations from the territories as of November 1er 1950 break down as follows<fnref n="17" /> (Fig. 9.1):

The funds raised—from both private and institutional donors—enabled the Maison to be built and refurbished. On March 12, 1949, a deed of gift was signed to the University of Paris for the building, its furnishings and future equipment, to be managed and financed by a foundation entitled “Université de Paris—Maison de la France d’Outre-mer”.<fnref n="18" /> The purpose of the foundation is to “enable the various associated states and territories of overseas France to associate their students with the work of

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ List of members of the Board of Directors (Ibid.).</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ The account given by Rector Capelle, in charge of reorganizing education in the colonies of sub-Saharan Africa, is edifying in this respect. His setbacks with the institutions of overseas France and a ministry that was piling up obstacles in his path towards greater equality forced him to resign, although he did return a few years later (see Jean CAPELLE, *L'Éducation en Afrique noire à la veille des indépendences*, Paris, Karthala, 1990).</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ Letter from Governor Martine to members of the FOM Board of Directors, Paris, December 1er 1950 (AN, 20090014/221). On the same date, the territories also pledged additional sums: AEF (23,500,000 fr.); New Caledonia (3,000,000 fr.); Oceania (1,063,000 fr.); St Pierre et Miquelon (700,000 fr.).</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ “Convention portant donation à l’université de Paris et création de la Maison de la France d’Outre-mer”, January 1949 (AN, 20090014/221).</footnote>
<table><caption>Fig. 9.1 Donations to the Maison de la France d'Outre-mer (1950)</caption><thead><tr><td>Source of donations</td><td>Amounts (in francs)</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>French West Africa</td><td>150,000,000</td></tr><tr><td>French Equatorial Africa</td><td>14,000,000</td></tr><tr><td>Cameroon</td><td>12,000,000</td></tr><tr><td>Madagascar</td><td>37,500,000</td></tr><tr><td>Oceania</td><td>1,937,000</td></tr><tr><td>New Caledonia</td><td>3,000,000</td></tr><tr><td>Saint-Pierre and Miquelon</td><td>800,000</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>219,237,000</td></tr></tbody></table>

moral rapprochement between the elite of youth of all origins and disciplines pursued by the CIUP”.<fnref n="19" /> In so doing, the Maison maintained its autonomy from the Fondation nationale de la CIUP, to which it was not attached. And on June 22, 1949, Paul Coste-Floret sealed the stone containing the lead tube which itself contained the deed of donation.

Once the house was built, Martine took care of the furnishings, as well as decorating it with works of art and tapestries. Today, you can still admire the walls of the main reception room covered with Aubusson tapestries, based on cartoons by the painter Roger Bezombes—most of whose work was marked by exoticism—and which “evoke the life and past of the TOM” in a naively mythical way. Two bas-reliefs for the façade were also commissioned, along with two life-size bronze statues and a stone statue. Three murals and two paintings completed the ensemble. The Maison had a library<fnref n="20" /> and a cafeteria.

In October 1951, the Maison de la FOM welcomed its first occupants. Applicants were selected on the basis of their academic record, in accordance with the general regulations of the CIUP, i.e. graduate level, age not exceeding 30, and up to 35 by special dispensation. The choice of applicants rests primarily with the Director, with the approval of the Board of Directors. A restrictive clause is also included: “In order to ensure that each country receives its fair share, and to classify applicants’ applications in an order that reflects the value of their studies, no one other than young people admitted to attend a Paris grande école may, in principle, be accepted at the present foundation without having completed an

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Unfortunately, we haven't been able to find the list of books ordered.</footnote>
internship at a regional university”.<fnref n="21" /> However, this clause was not always respected. La Maison has 249 beds, with single or double rooms, as well as three studios for young families, which is hardly superfluous given that the age of marriage in sub-Saharan Africa was earlier than in France, and that African students were generally older than their French counterparts. Places are allocated according to the funding obtained from the territories, which thus have “founded beds” in *proportion to* the sums invested, although this does not rule out their nationals being accommodated in other houses of the CIUP. In any case, the CIUP is committed to housing as many students from overseas France as there are places available in the Maison de la FOM, i.e. almost 240²² (Fig. 9.2).

All that remained was to choose the director of the Maison, which gave rise to an interesting debate in the Board of Directors, in which the French Overseas Territories/National Education divide mentioned above was again present. As the director was to be “appointed by the Rector of the University Council on the proposal of the Board of Directors, with the consent of the Minister of Overseas France”,<fnref n="23" /> the debate that began in the spring of 1951 focused on whether the director should have a knowledge of overseas France or be an academic. Senghor, for example, was

<table><caption>Fig. 9.2 Capacity of the Maison de la France d'Outre-mer (1951)</caption><thead><tr><td>Territories</td><td>Number of beds</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>French West Africa</td><td>100</td></tr><tr><td>French Equatorial Africa</td><td>15</td></tr><tr><td>Cameroon</td><td>27</td></tr><tr><td>Madagascar</td><td>57</td></tr><tr><td>Togo</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Oceania</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>Upper Volta</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>New Caledonia</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>India, Mauritania, Sudan, Senegal, Niger, Guinea, Middle Congo, Gabon, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>École nationale de la France d'outre-mer (ENFOM) and École nationale supérieure d'agriculture tropicale (ENSAT)</td><td>22</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>240</td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote n="21">²¹ Articles of association (YEAR, 20090014/223).</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² Note (AN, 20090014/222).</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ Articles of association (YEAR, 20090014/223).</footnote>
in favor of an academic. He stresses “the fact that the task of the future director will be very delicate, especially on the psychological level. The students are young and turbulent, and most of them come from overseas, which is going through a growth crisis”. In his view, the colonial experience can either help or hinder the future director. Rector Sarrailh naturally concurred, explaining: “I have the impression that students from overseas France, when they are not under the direction of an academic or former academic, think that they are always looking at a civil servant who deals with the police”.<fnref n="24" /> In the end, the lucky man was Georges Gaston, agrégé in Spanish, former lycée principal, former director of public education in Tunisia and Inspector General for Education and Youth at the Ministry of Overseas France.

The Maison is ready for business. From 1951 to the end of the 1970s, it was to undergo a series of ups and downs, linked to residents' protests, the end of the French African Empire and African independence. Although 1960 was the year of independence, it did not mean immediate and abrupt change in many areas. At the Maison de l'Afrique, the beds founded by the territories would henceforth be those of the States (except for New Caledonia, Polynesia and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon), and in 1968 the residents would demand to have an African director, whose authority would be just as contested as that of his French predecessor.

## CHALLENGES

The first disputes arose very soon after the creation of the company. In 1953, opposition to the director grew around two issues.<fnref n="25" /> The first was a challenge to the legitimacy of the residents' committee, which was said to be under the tutelage of Director Gaston; the second was the exclusion of a resident on the grounds of an undue female visit. The two “causes” were soon combined in the demands, and agitation grew at the Maison de la FOM, all the more so as it was grafted onto already existing demonstrations at the Pavillon des Etudiants arméniens.<fnref n="26" /> An impromptu general assembly was held during a film club session on March 13, 1953, which led the director to expel the leaders: Charles Carrère, Bounaima

<footnote n="24">²⁴ Board meeting of April 10, 1951 (AN, 20090014/227/1).</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ AN, 20090014/239.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶ *Ibid.*</footnote>
Nourou, Papa Gallo Thiam and Babacar Niang. On March 23, a new general assembly decided to cease all activities at the house, and to strike against rent and the cafeteria.<fnref n="27" /> A demonstration in support of the residents of the Maison de la FOM brings together 400 to 500 students at the CIUP. The Communist Party also supports the action in the columns of *L'Humanité*, all the more so as Papa Gallo Thiam is French high jump champion, and a Communist student leaflet takes offense:

> From the end of last year, acts of arbitrariness were committed by Messrs Gaston and Masson directors of FOM and Indochina - colonial pavilions - alone topped by supervisory committees comprising parliamentarians, colonial administration personalities, overseas capitalists, committees intended to make a political choice among residents.<fnref n="28" />

In the end, after a great deal of negotiation and intervention, the director gave in on everything. The excluded residents—who had never left the premises—were reinstated. A new residents’ committee was elected, including a board composed precisely by the protesters, and life resumed its ordinary course. This first movement was important because it heralded later forms of action and demands. The African students were protesting against arbitrariness and a mode of governance specific to the colonial pavilions. The question of women’s visits is not, a priori, very political, but if we consider that it was precisely the question of co-education in university dormitories that was to form the basis of the March 22nd movement in Nanterre University fifteen years later, we can consider this question to be anything but insignificant: isn’t the private sphere political? As for the methods of action—rent strikes and cafeteria boycotts—they would be used extensively thereafter.

A new case arose two years later, highlighting other aspects of life for overseas students. In December 1955, it concerned a restaurant at the CIUP. The residents of the Maison de la FOM demanded that the restaurant in the Parc Ouest of the CIUP be made accessible to overseas students,<fnref n="29" /> whether or not they were residents of the CIUP, and consequently refused to show their resident card at the entrance to the

<footnote n="27">²⁷ Note on the March 23 demonstration (Ibid.).</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸ AN, 20090014/239.</footnote>

<footnote n="29">²⁹ Communiqué to Park West residents in the form of an open letter to AIRCUP (AN, 20090014/239).</footnote>
restaurant. The restaurant was then closed by Rector Marchaud, General Delegate of the Fondation Nationale. In addition to delegates from the Maison de la FOM, a committee was set up to make demands for the restaurant, including representatives of the Association des étudiants d'origine malgache (AEOM)<fnref n="30" /> and the Fédération des étudiants d'Afrique noire en France (FEANF).<fnref n="31" /> The affair escalated: a committee from the other pavilions of the CIUP objected to what would be a privilege granted to overseas France, and the president of the International Association of Residents of the CIUP (AIRCUP), Jean Charlot, wrote to Senghor asking him to intervene in favor of a relaxation of entry controls, in order, he said, not to aggravate an affair that could provoke racist reactions to the “racism” of overseas students.<fnref n="32" /> We don't know whether Senghor intervened, but it's quite possible, given the future president of Senegal's concern for teaching and education. In 1958, Gabonese Senator Luc Durand-Réville, also a member of the Maison de la FOM Board of Directors, wrote to André François-Poncet, President of the Fondation nationale de la CIUP, to denounce the “anti-white discrimination” at the entrance to the restaurant.<fnref n="33" /> This would seem to indicate that the African students have more or less won their case.

Beyond the CIUP, the early 1950s saw African students in France rapidly organize and politicize their demands. Their numbers grew rapidly

<footnote n="30">³⁰ On AEOM until 1960, see RAJAONAH Faranirina, “Être étudiant en métropole à l’avènement de l’indépendance: l’association des étudiants d’origine malgache de 1947 à 1960”, *Afrika Zamani*, n°13 et 14, 2005–2006, p. 1–22.</footnote>

<footnote n="31">³¹ There are several histories of FEANF written by former members and/or presidents of the association: DIANÉ CHARLES, *La FEANF et les grandes heures du mouvement syndical étudiant noir*, Paris, Chaka, 1971; DIENG Amady Aly, *Les premiers pas de la Fédération des étudiants d'Afrique noire en France. De l'union française à Bandung (1950-1955)*, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2003; *Les Grands combats de la FEANF. De Bandung aux indépendances*, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2009; TRAORÉ Sékou, *La Fédération des étudiants d'Afrique noire en France*, Paris, L'Harmattan, 1985. See also BLUM Françoise, “L’indépendance sera révolutionnaire ou ne sera pas: étudiants africains en France contre l’ordre colonial”, *Cahiers d’histoire: revue d’histoire critique*, n°126, January-March 2015, pp. 119–138; on FEANF after 1960, see BLUM Françoise, “Ce que les indépendances firent à la FEANF: des étudiants en diaspora face à leurs États”, in BLUM Françoise, GUIDI Pierre and RILLON Ophélie (dir.), *Étudiants africains en mouvements: contribution à une histoire des années 68*, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2016.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³² Letter dated November 28, 1955 (AN, 20090014/239).</footnote>

<footnote n="33">³³ Letter from Durand-Réville to the Minister of Education, January 4, 1958 (YEAR 20090014/239).</footnote>
in the 1950s, and accelerated thereafter,<fnref n="34" /> although the break with independence was not a factor. Loneliness, disorientation, specific problems in terms of housing and other facilities soon led them to organize themselves into two associations: the Association des étudiants d’origine malgache (AEOM) for Malagasy students, and the Fédération des étudiants d’Afrique noire en France (FEANF) for other Africans. Both were initially very corporatist in their early years, but became more radical and took the lead in demanding total and unconditional independence. The FEANF staff, moderate in the first three years, shifted their positions in a Marxist and revolutionary direction. Many of its members were linked to the Communist Party or belonged to the “Language Group”. The CIUP’s African residents belonged to the Section des Provinces de France, based at the Maison of the same name. The rise in demands at the Maison de la FOM corresponded to a much more general rise in demands from African students, and their opposition to all forms of reformism, as well as to all forms of colonial paternalism. We don’t have a list of the FEANF’s members, but if we consider only the executive committee, i.e. its governing body, we find many people who stayed at the CIUP: Abdoul Bâ, Babacar Niang, Ousmane Camara, Amady Aly Dieng, Mamadou Barry, Louis Koffi Amega, Bassirou Barry, Assane Bâ, Habib Thiam, Cheikh Bâ, Magatte Thiam, Mamadou Sarr, Emmanuel Ngassa, El Caba Touré, Jean-Jacques Ekindi,<fnref n="35" /> and a few other ordinary militants such as the future president of Senegal, Abdou Diouf. In his history of the FEANF, the Guinean Charles Diané recounts how, in 1959, he led a major rent strike at the FOM’s headquarters, which lasted six months,<fnref n="36" /> to protest against a rent increase.

<footnote n="34">³⁴ In 1949, according to Administrator Monod’s report, there were 500 African students and pupils on scholarship and around 500 not on scholarship. By 1950, the figure given in the Monod report had already doubled to just over 2000 students. By 1952–1953, there were 4000 students (including 1320 with scholarships), 6000 in 1958 (including 2634 with scholarships), and 8000 in 1960 (17% girls, 13% married students, 44% with scholarships).</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵ On the trajectories of these students see: BLUM Françoise, *Trajectoires militantes et (re)conversions: à propos de la FEANF: que sont-ils/elles devenues?*, mémoire d’habilitation à diriger des recherches, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2016. Most of them went on to excel in the highest political and/or administrative positions.</footnote>

<footnote n="36">³⁶ Diané Charles, *La FEANF...*, op. cit. p. 158–159. Diané does not specify the date, but this strike took place after the creation of the PAI (African Independence Party) and before independence. It was probably in 1959.</footnote>
In a way, FEANF has always considered itself at home at the Maison de la FOM, as well as in the other Mecca for African students in Paris: 69 boulevard Poniatowski (“Ponia”), a building belonging to the West African States. These two places are the “African houses” of Paris, even more so than the hostels of the various territories, whose national character does not necessarily suit young men and women who want to be pan-African. The former president of FEANF, Ousmane Camara, described the Maison de la FOM as “Ponia” in a very picturesque way, which somewhat corroborates the words of the directors, albeit without the indignant tone:

Room 238, which I later shared with Amady Aly Dieng, became a veritable place of pilgrimage for former students, as it was not only a dormitory for "illegal" students (including Papa Gallo Thiam<fnref n="37" />, French high jump champion at the time, and a student at the Ecole des Arts et Métiers, who set up shop with his easel, and Birane Wane, whom the events of May 1958 turned into a "refugee"), but also during the day, a club where Henri Lopès, Abdou Diouf, Amady Aly Dieng, Raymond Charlier and his wife Tatiana, Roland Depret, all three friends of Papa Gallo Thiam<fnref n="38" />, rub shoulders in joyful disorder. When, the following year, in 1959, I was granted a single room, it was Abdou Diouf who took my place in room 238, perpetuating "the tradition".

The FOM pavilion, the maison de l'AOF ON boulevard Poniatowski in the 12c arrondissement and the Jean Zay university residence in Antony (near Paris) form the triangle of what could be called "Little Senegal". Alongside the students who are regularly allocated rooms, there's an army of illegal immigrants with occupations that are more or less open to scrutiny. In the basement of the FOM, a Senegalese clandestine restaurant serves "tiébou dieune" and "mafé" that have nothing to envy their counterparts prepared in Senegal<fnref n="39" />."

Charles Diané describes a form of partition:

<footnote n="37">³⁷ As we have seen, Papa Gallo Thiam was a resident, but if Ousmane Camara is to be believed, he remained more or less in hiding in the Cité.</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ And PCF members.</footnote>

<footnote n="39">³⁹ CAMARA Ousmane, *Mémoires d'un juge africain: itinéraire d'un homme libre*, Paris, Karthala, pp. 43–44.</footnote>
In fact, the Cité Internationale and the Pavillon de la France d'Outre-mer at 47 boulevard Jourdan have become practically the drop-off point for all those who, having completed their undergraduate studies in Dakar, are automatically oriented towards France. On the other side of the Paris ring road, the Maison d'Afrique on boulevard Poniatowski at the Porte Dorée is the domain of the movement's hardliners, those who take part in all the petitions, demonstrations and marches. It's also the real stronghold of the PAI<fnref n="40" />. Here, the title of glory is the experience acquired in the battles of the Latin Quarter; over there, on Boulevard Jourdan, you settle in with the halo acquired in the field, even in Africa.<fnref n="41" />

After independence in 1960, incidents, demonstrations and movements of all kinds continued, and increased in intensity, with several cases of occupation and sequestration of personnel. Struggle strategies thus became more radical, in line with a general trend in social movements, where the occupation of premises (factories, high schools, offices, etc.) became a recurrent practice in the 1960s, culminating in 1968. In this respect, African students were part of the general (dis)order. In 1962, for example, the residents declared war on the new director Jean Vialatte de Pémille, who had taken up his post in November 1961, and formulated a whole series of demands deemed unacceptable, including co-management. At the head of the movement were the aforementioned FEANF men Magatte Thiam, Mamadou Sarr and others.<fnref n="42" /> Following police intervention, the residents were evicted. It was also from this movement in 1962 that the Maison closed its doors in the summer.

Rent strikes, building occupations and police intervention were all commonplace in the 1960s and 1970s. While independence had little to do with the students' modes of action, it did have other effects. Embassies sided with residents against the management at,<fnref n="43" /> demanding

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ The Parti africain de l'indépendance (PAI) is a Marxist party founded in Thiès (Senegal) in 1957 by student Majhemout Diop. Most of the FEANF staff are PAI.</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ DIANÉ Charles, *op. cit.* p. 156.</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴² Incidents of August 1962 (YEAR, 20090014/239).</footnote>

<footnote n="43">⁴³ For example: letter from the ambassador of Madagascar to the director “convinced that such incidents could have been avoided” (August 17, 1962) or letter from the ambassador of Senegal requesting the reinstatement of an expelled student (May 8, 1974). Following this letter, Maurice Valigny appealed to Léopold Sédar Senghor against the embassy, letter dated May 24 1974 (AN, 20090014/239).</footnote>
accountability not without contradictions, since the states they repre-
sented were themselves taking retaliatory measures against their own
students in France, all the more so when, from 1967 onwards, the latter
systematically occupied their embassies.<fnref n="44" /> The African states unquestion-
ably considered that it was up to them to police a House where they had
“founded beds”, and not to the management linked to the French admin-
istration. National solidarity works, but it doesn’t when it comes to taking
away a student’s scholarship. In the case of La CIUP, the embassies tend
to take the side of their students who, moreover, do not hesitate to call
on them,<fnref n="45" /> even though they dispute the legitimacy of the powers that
be in Africa.

In May 68, the pavilion was the first to be occupied in the CIUP. The occupation was preceded by a number of incidents. On May 16, a poster calling for a General Assembly was torn down by the pavilion direction. This led to a heated exchange between the secretary of the Residents' Committee and the Maison's bursar, who allegedly said: "You have no right to discuss anything. Your relationship with the management is that of tenants and landlords, which means it's a commercial relationship, except that there are no profits". A little later, the bursar is said to have confirmed these remarks, adding: "In any case, I'm at home here in France, and in good French that means what it means".<fnref n="46" /> If the remarks in question were indeed made, they are not only racist, but perfectly absurd, since it is the African states that rent the beds in the house, and there is no commercial relationship whatsoever mentioned by the bursar, and if there is a commercial relationship, it is between the states and their students. Nevertheless, these words did not go unanswered. The students held a general assembly on the same day, and drew up a list of demands. In addition to the demand for the bursar's departure, and a few other circumstantial demands concerning the day-to-day running of the Maison, the most important was undoubtedly that of co-management, which had already been formulated during previous demonstrations. The General Meeting immediately decided to occupy the building.

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ See BLUM Françoise, “Ce que les indépendances firent à la FEANF”, art. cit.</footnote>

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵ For example: Letter from the FOM Residents' Committee, August 4, 1962 (AN, 20090014/239).</footnote>

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ May 68 fund from the Centre d'histoire sociale des mondes contemporains—CC1801_P1CHS_2-Mai-68-11_0008.</footnote>
We don't know exactly when it will come to an end, nor exactly how it was carried out, i.e. who was actively involved and what activities were organized. Nevertheless, the residents did obtain a share in the management of the Maison, a new name—Maison de l'Afrique—and the appointment of an African director, the Dahomean Damien Agboton, who would in turn be taken to task a few months later. But their satisfaction was short-lived. The following leaflet is proof of this:

Down with the neo-colonial administration of the Maison d'Afrique.

On May 16, 1968, the African residents and students, with the help of their comrades at the CIUP, threw down the colonialist director and his clique and demanded a new status for the Maison corresponding to the reality of independence. Among other things, the African students and residents demanded a “statute” to enable greater student participation in the management of their Maison; a more genuine representation of those who finance the management of the Maison, demanding in particular a parity presence at all levels, right up to the board of directors. After lengthy negotiations with the administration, in view of the still neo-colonial structure of African states, the students finally obtained only a change of name for the Maison, which became “Maison d'Afrique”: “The presence of an African director, the co-management system, is absolutely bogus; in fact, in the co-management system proposed by the administration, the director could never be outvoted, because in the event of conflict with the director and the others, it's the board of directors who decide, which contains 6 residents out of 27 members, and in the event of a tie, the director, chairman of the management committee, decides as a last resort. In fact, in the area of Maison management, this was a simulacrum of a change of pot without any change in content. That's why the Board, conscious of its mission and following a decision by a general meeting of residents, decided not to co-manage. The new director, of African origin, was none other than a product of colonial administration and French reaction, reactionary in spirit and practice, and characterized by obvious incapacity and ignorance in the management of the Maison”.<sup>47</sup> Maurice Valigny, who would later head the company from 1972 onwards, describes the situation as follows:

<footnote n="47"><sup>47</sup> AN, 20090014/239.</footnote>
Reputed to be ungovernable, anarchic and dirty, it was here that one of the last French directors, Monsieur de Pémille, owed his salvation in May '68 to his prudent retreat. The French authorities thought they were acting wisely when they gave these young, hot-blooded, insurgent blacks a black director, Doctor Agboton, a Dahomean. After the euphoria of his enthronement, more difficult days followed which, after fights, brawls, blows and wounds, ended with the ousting of the principal by rectoral authority.<fnref n="48" />

Incompetence or ignorance, we don't know, but the Dahomean Damien Agboton had a hard time managing a house that was constantly at war with him. The problems he had to face from 1968 to 1972 were of various kinds: difficulty in obtaining payment of sums due from the African states; difficulty in obtaining payment of royalties from residents; constant opposition from residents who criticized his authoritarianism and mismanagement; choice of an inappropriate accounting agent to whom he demanded explanations (malfeasance or negligence, we don't know<fnref n="49" />). The accounting officer in question had, moreover, apparently been chosen by Damien Agboton without following CIUP rules, i.e. validation by the Board of Directors.<fnref n="50" /> It is likely that the year 1968 allowed for many irregularities.

One year after Mai 68, on October 10, 1969, the residents once again drafted a motion in which they denounced Agboton's "nepotistic and regionalist"<fnref n="51" /> administration and the disastrous material state of the Maison. They reiterated their unsatisfied demands of 1968, and consequently announced their intention to occupy the administrative premises. A few days later, Damien Agboton informed Pierre Marthelot, general delegate of the CIUP, of the hostility he was encountering, as well as the hard-line actions carried out by the residents: a "commando of individuals" had apparently seized the admission files in his office on October 22, and the members of the commando had threatened to break the windows of his apartment that evening.<fnref n="52" /> These were not the only threats

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ About a reconstruction trial (AN, 20090014/229).</footnote>

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ Amégan case, 1969-1971 (AN, 20090014).</footnote>

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ Letter from Marthelot to Agboton, March 19, 1971 (Ibid.).</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ Motion by Maison d'Afrique residents, November 10, 1969 (AN, 20090014/239).</footnote>

<footnote n="52">⁵² Letter from Agboton to Pierre Marthelot, October 23, 1969 (AN, 200090014).</footnote>
he received. A rather anecdotal letter addressed to him on February 14, 1970:

Mr. Director, you swore to lose me. But me too, if you'll allow me, I swear to lose you. "To souls well born, value does not wait for the number of years" (Corneille). I honor you for everything you organize, but let me say out loud that this is not the right way. Always against you. Shachac Oyabisi.<fnref n="53" />

## CIUP MANAGEMENT TAKES CONTROL

Marthelot's letters to Agboton were generally unfriendly, and unlikely to give Agboton much confidence in the future. The situation continued to deteriorate until 1972, when the CIUP, through its General Delegate, took matters into its own hands. In April 1972, Agboton was dismissed, but this did not prevent him from continuing to take certain measures to "protect" the money of African states. On April 14, 1972, Agboton sent a letter to all the embassies of bed-holding countries, telling them that he had opened an account in his own name for the purpose of safeguarding the money owed by the States,<fnref n="54" /> given the threats hanging over the House (i.e. the loss of its autonomy and its attachment to the National Foundation), it was to this account that the States should pay their dues.<fnref n="55" /> Some of them, such as Côte d'Ivoire,<fnref n="56" /> will indeed do so. Agboton understood perfectly well what was going on: the very poor management of the FOM, then in a serious deficit situation and in a catastrophic state of repair (according to the students themselves), was an opportunity for the Fondation nationale de la CIUP. Indeed, in the post-1968 years, the latter had embarked on a general reform aimed at taking many of the houses in hand, with a view to depoliticizing and "francizing" them by replacing foreign directors with French ones. In 1973, in an open letter, some directors denounced the reform of the CIUP and

<footnote n="53">⁵³ AN, 20090014/239.</footnote>

<footnote n="54">⁵⁴ Letters dated March 29, 1972 (AN, 20090014/227/1).</footnote>

<footnote n="55">⁵⁵ *Ibid.*</footnote>

<footnote n="56">⁵⁶ *Ibid.*</footnote>
the veritable “pogrom” against foreigners.<fnref n="57" /> The political context was all the more favorable in that a new French policy of cooperation was underway with African countries, designed to replace the inter-state relations instituted by the Franco-African Community (which had replaced the French Union in 1958⁵⁸). At the same time, borders were to be closed to African nationals, who had hitherto been able to move freely from one area to another with no formalities other than the possession of an identity card.<fnref n="59" /> This became a reality in the mid-1970s, when the cooperation and settlement agreements between France and its former sub-Saharan colonies were renegotiated.

It was in this spirit that the Maison de la FOM, which more or less officially became the Maison de l'Afrique after 1968, was taken in hand by the general delegate of the CIUP, Pierre Marthelot. Agboton was sacked, the residents-occupants of the Maison were evicted by the Republican Security Companies (CRS) on August 7, 1972, and the house was closed indefinitely. A court-appointed administrator was put in charge of liquidating the Maison's liabilities, not without difficulty either, since Agboton had not managed the business rigorously and had not been able to return all the relevant documents.<fnref n="60" /> A project manager, who would later become director of the Maison, was appointed to restore the premises: he was the left-wing Gaullist and director of the Association culturelle et sportive des étudiants malgaches et africains (ACSEMA)<fnref n="61" /> Maurice Valigny. The articles of association are revised and a rider added to the deed of gift. Here's

<footnote n="57">⁵⁷ Letter of resignation from two directors' representatives [Rogado Dias and Arpiarian] following the reform without warning and discussion of the Articles of Association, Paris, October 15, 1973 (AN, 20090014/227/2 and AN, 20090014/239).</footnote>

<footnote n="58">⁵⁸ The “yes” vote in the September 1958 referendum meant Community membership for the African territories. The “no” vote meant immediate independence. Only Guinea voted “no”. But the Community never really existed. It remained in place via cooperation agreements and various conventions signed between African states and France.</footnote>

<footnote n="59">⁵⁹ There was also freedom of establishment and work, thanks to the conventions signed. These had not been signed by all of France's African partners, but the French government, and in particular the African Affairs Secretariat at the Élysée Palace, did not wish to make any distinction between the various countries. This freedom of movement and establishment was obviously reciprocal, thus safeguarding French interests in Africa.</footnote>

<footnote n="60">⁶⁰ To the President of the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance, Henri Gondre, Judicial Administrator to the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance.</footnote>

<footnote n="61">⁶¹ ACSEMA was one of the associations set up to ensure the successful integration of African students, but also to compete with the influence of FEANF.</footnote>
how Maurice Valigny described the place as he found it when he took up
his post:

A dirty, foul-smelling ghetto, overrun by widely differentiated vermin,
modern facilities... in 1951, already marked at the time by a conception
of prestige more than comfort, prematurely aged by the absence of any
maintenance. The sanitary facilities were rare and in an incredible state
of disrepair; the premises were dark, filthy and used against all common
sense, with astonishing shortcomings. The girls' showers have no doors,
the mattresses are partly punctured, the washbasins are unsealed, and the
electrical installations are rich in short-circuits. The list goes on. Add to
this, after the August eviction, the short but very devastating existence of
an anarchic micro-society, more or less influenced by a curious so-called
"action" committee, to which the last representative of legal authority
handed over his keys.<fnref n="62" />

In a letter to Pierre Marthelot, Valigny also mentions:

> A visit to the rooms gives a very clear idea of the tenants' state of mind. They were occupying a kind of fortress, organized as best they could to last and resist. On the walls, slogans, maps, leaflets and dioramas of an often clumsy and curiously primitive kind. From the FEANF, the jar with a hundred holes<fnref n="63" />, plugged by associated hands with, attached as an instrument of progress and civilization, a magnificent machine pistol<fnref n="64" />...

The refurbishment, financed in particular by the French Ministry of
Education, lasted until October 4, 1973, when the house was once again
able to accept its first hand-picked residents. In the meantime, contacts
had been made with the embassies of countries holding beds.<fnref n="65" /> The
most significant development, introduced in an amendment to the deed
of donation,<fnref n="66" /> was the creation of an advisory committee, which now

<footnote n="62">⁶² Maurice Valigny, Board meeting of March 20, 1973 (AN, 20090014/227/1).</footnote>

<footnote n="63">⁶³ The hundred-hole jar, emblem of King Ghezo of Dahomey, became the FEANF emblem. It was accompanied by the following maxim: "If all the sons of the kingdom came together and plugged the holes in the pierced jar, the kingdom would be saved".</footnote>

<footnote n="64">⁶⁴ Letter from Valigny to Pierre Marthelot, September 4, 1972 (AN, 20090014/223).</footnote>

<footnote n="65">⁶⁵ Board meeting of June 21, 1973 (AN, 20090014/227/1).</footnote>

<footnote n="66">⁶⁶ Draft amendment to the deed of donation to the University of Paris by the Maison de la France d'Outre-mer, which became the Maison d'Afrique: "A consultative and</footnote>
includes representatives of the embassies. In fact, no trace of a meeting of this committee was found after September 1975, which suggests that it fell into a dormant state, and that the reform had borne the fruit the CIUP's administrators had aspired to, i.e. the sidelining of the States, and the end of their power over the house. This is not an isolated event. The evolution was the same within OEOM, now OCAU, where representatives of the new countries were excluded from the Board of Directors and thus from the management of their students' files.<fnref n="67" />

As a symbol of this new direction, the house was renamed, at Pierre Marthelot's suggestion, "Résidence Lucien Paye", after the former Minister of Education and diplomat posted to North Africa and Senegal. Pierre Marthelot himself had an academic career in Tunisia, and cannot but have crossed paths with Lucien Paye. It was also important to avoid "names that could create illusions about the purely national aspect of the Houses, which they do not have by statute (Maison de l'Afrique)".<fnref n="68" /> Names and statutes are now in unison. Perhaps even more important is the role now assigned to the Fonds d'aide à la coopération (FAC).<fnref n="69" /> In exchange for its subsidies, the FAC will now have beds reserved for its own scholarship holders, i.e. French government scholarship holders, to the detriment of scholarship holders from African states, at a time when we are witnessing an exponential increase in scholarships awarded by states and an equally exponential decrease in FAC<fnref n="70" /> scholarships.

On January 30, 1974, the situation at the Maison de l'Afrique was as follows: out of 230 residents, 22 were of non-African nationality, and there were a total of 34 nationalities, including 101 college scholarship holders (83 boys, 8 girls, 5 couples) and 113 national scholarship holders (97 boys, 8 girls, 4 couples). In addition, there were eight students

advisory committee is also set up, comprising, in addition to the members of the Board of Directors, representatives of the founding States or Territories of beds at the Maison d'Afrique. The Advisory and Steering Committee is kept informed of the progress of the Maison d'Afrique, and is empowered to make wishes and suggestions concerning its operation. It meets at least once a year, convened by the Chairman of the Board", September 20, 1972 (AN, 20090014/223).

<footnote n="67">⁶⁷ Fabienne Guimont, op. cit.</footnote>

<footnote n="68">⁶⁸ Presentation by Pierre Marthelot, Advisory Committee, July 19, 1973 (AN, 20090014/229).</footnote>

<footnote n="69">⁶⁹ FAC was created in 1959. It replaced FIDES to help finance projects under cooperation agreements.</footnote>

<footnote n="70">⁷⁰ OCAU statistics (Archives nationales. Fonds OCAU).</footnote>
admitted under the French quota and eight students admitted outside the quota.<fnref n="71" /> Two observations can be made from these figures. Firstly, it must be borne in mind that they are very low: in 1967/1968, students from sub-Saharan Africa represented just 3.65% of all students housed at the CIUP. In 1973/1974, they represented 5.68% and 6.40% in 1977/1978. These figures include students from English- and Portuguese-speaking Africa, who are not admitted to the Maison d'Afrique, but whose numbers are also increasing.<fnref n="72" /> Moreover, the proportion of girls is lower than for the CIUP as a whole. This is due to the considerable delay in girls' education during the colonial period, a delay that the new states are striving to make up for. These are the characteristics of the FOM population: very much a minority and very much male. No sufficiently global figures allow us to establish disciplinary specificities, assuming there are any.<fnref n="73" />

What's more, the proportion of FAC scholarship holders continued to grow, to the detriment of national scholarship holders. As early as June 1974, following further incidents at the Maison, the Ministry of Cooperation considered the idea of housing only FAC scholarship holders there.<fnref n="74" /> By the start of the 1974–1975 academic year, FAC already had 170 beds, and requests from embassies could not be met, even though defaulters had been contacted and accounts cleared. Moreover, embassies were informed of the possibility of accommodating their scholarship holders in other houses by signing agreements.<fnref n="75" /> A commission now decides on admissions, and a certificate of pre-registration in a higher education establishment will be required to apply to the CIUP.<fnref n="76" /> The CIUP's

<footnote n="71">⁷¹ Board of Directors' meeting of February 6, 1974, Appendix 2.</footnote>

<footnote n="72">⁷² OCAU Dossier, Management (AN, 19780596/46).</footnote>

<footnote n="73">⁷³ Among all African students in France during the 60s and 70s, disciplinary specificities (i.e. disciplinary differences from French students) tended to disappear. In terms of gender, in 1960 only 17% of African students in higher education were girls. By way of comparison, in 1966–1967, female students represented 45.1% of all students (we have no figures for 1960).</footnote>

<footnote n="74">⁷⁴ Letter from the Minister of Cooperation to the Director of OCAU, Paris, June 14, 1974 (AN, 20090014/229).</footnote>

<footnote n="75">⁷⁵ Letter from Pierre Marthelot to the Ambassador of Upper Volta, Paris, September 5, 1974 (AN, 20090014/229).</footnote>

<footnote n="76">⁷⁶ Applications for university enrolment must now also be submitted to the Ministry of Cooperation, via the OCAU. The following documents are required for enrolment at Cité Universitaire: readmission application form; results of the last two academic years;</footnote>
desire to encourage the mixing of students of different nationalities in its pavilions was strongly asserted, even if the reality did not live up to the administrators' expectations. As late as 1977, the Tunisia pavilion and the Résidence Lucien Paye ranked last in terms of student mixing, with a rate of 17%. The need for brewing was used as a pretext to raise the fees to the same level as in the other houses. The increase was also justified by the desire to stop African residents looking like “welfare recipients”.⁷⁷ In 1973, fees for single rooms were raised from 190 to 250 francs, and for double rooms from 160 to 195 francs per bed. It was also decided that unpaid rents would be deducted directly from students’ scholarships, a practice made easy by OCAU’s management.

Despite these changes, the management of Valigny is not going to be a smooth ride. A housekeeper was guilty of complicity with the residents and of mismanagement, and had to be replaced,⁷⁸ but whether or not the housekeeper was to blame, the damage had been done and the house was once again financially weakened.

The unrest didn't cease with the takeover of the home, either. As early as May 1974, a conflict broke out between management and residents, who occupied the premises and kidnapped staff to make themselves heard.⁷⁹ A police commissioner, the delegate general, and the administrative secretary general of the CIUP, who had come to negotiate, were in turn kidnapped. The protesters demanded the reinstatement of an expelled Senegalese student and the right to participate in the Board of Directors. It was the intervention of the police that freed the “prisoners” and dislodged the occupiers, some of whom were—briefly—taken into custody.⁸⁰ Former Gabonese Senator Durand-Réville, a member of the Board of Directors of the Résidence Lucien Paye and Chairman of

certificate of enrolment or pre-registration at a university in the Paris académie; scholarship certificate (as only scholarship students are now admitted); medical certificate for admission (Minutes of the Board of Directors meeting of February 5, 1975, AN, 20090014/229).

⁷⁷ Presentation by Pierre Marthelot, Advisory Committee, July 19, 1973 (AN, 20090014/229).

⁷⁸ It was a certain Madame Lacroix, a senior administrator at the Résidence Paye, seconded from the French Ministry of Education. She felt that the house rules were too strict. She was also accused of unpaid bills (Report by Pierre Marthelot on the management of Madame Lacroix, addressed to the office of the Rector of the Paris Academy, May 13, 1975, AN, 20090014/227/1).

⁷⁹ Directors' Conference, May 28, 1974 (AN, 20090014/227/1).

⁸⁰ AN, 20090014/223.
the Conseil économique et social (Economic and Social Council) essen-
tializes the attitude of the residents. It's true that young people have
to be young, but there is, in his opinion, a "problem specific to the
house and which derives from African nature: African students have a
very sure intuition, in the event of conflict, of which side is stronger.
More than anyone else, they are sensitive to authority. If they feel that
the party in front of them is prepared to give in, no positive outcome can
be expected".<fnref n="81" /> The endemic unrest that persisted throughout 1974 was
blamed on the influence of a French troublemaker who was a member of
the AJS. Valigny gives a highly disillusioned account of his disappointments
with the Maison d'Afrique, adding:

I could feel an omnipresent conductor. I quickly spotted him. In this African world, he was a white man, affiliated to a Trotskyist group. He arrived at the Residence empty-handed, escorted by four athletic Africans carrying his luggage. I really saw that incredible scene. Afterwards, watching him and his escort, I often thought of that Germanic character, Hans the Pied Piper. For it was drowning that he was leading them. In fact, I was often incensed by these de facto attacks on African dignity. And I was the colonialist<fnref n="82" />!

Durand-Reville, Valigny... These are just a few quotations that bear witness to a more general fact: comments on events at the Maison de la FOM-Résidence Lucien Paye, often refer to a mode of explanation linked to a specific African psychology—childish if we are to believe the allegory of the Pied Piper—and, of course, forged in the mold of the most widely shared prejudices.<fnref n="83" /> The house is reputed to be ungovernable, even though the turmoil that reigns there is the general fact of ultra-politicized years. In 1976, a major crisis known as the “bedspread affair”<fnref n="84" /> shook the house once again. The director had withheld sums from the deposits, according to him, for damage to the bedspreads. This provoked an outcry, with residents claiming that bedspreads are flammable and therefore dangerous. The house is once again occupied.

<footnote n="81">⁸¹ Letter to Maurice Valigny (AN, 200914/223).</footnote>

<footnote n="82">⁸² Valigny, "Avant qu'un échec ne devient définitif" (AN, 20090014/239).</footnote>

<footnote n="83">⁸³ Even if Maurice Valigny doesn't have the self-righteousness of a Durand-Réville, and has shown great respect for his residents in other circumstances.</footnote>

<footnote n="84">⁸⁴ “Top-of-the-bed case” (AN, 20090014/239).</footnote>
House staff go on strike to protest against “insults, assaults, sequestration of part of the staff, etc.” The residents retorted that it was the director himself who had forced the staff to strike. The staff then published a statement accusing the residents alone.

What was new in 1976, however, were the retaliatory measures, which were part of a general trend in immigration policies. FAC scholarships were withdrawn and, above all, four residents were expelled from France. Students had already been expelled, either by the French government for disturbing the peace or similar reasons, or at the request of African governments. These expulsions made African students cautious, as they refrained from demonstrating on the public highway, and reserved their movements for their own spaces, the territories they felt belonged to them: embassies and... Maison d'Afrique. But for the first time, in 1976, Lucien Paye residents were evicted because of their activities within a Maison that was no longer quite Maison d'Afrique. This was one of the many manifestations of a restrictive and repressive policy towards immigrants, whether students or workers. The leaflets defending students were more general in their defense of immigrants. Nationals of the former French overseas territories, after having been citizens and then foreigners, became immigrants.

We’ll stop here, because the second half of the 1970s ushered in a new era, the fundamentals of which are still in place: an era of timid cooperation policies, a highly restrictive visa policy, an era in which the great France gave way to a frigid withdrawal into the hexagon. What presided over the construction of the FOM pavilion, which was an affirmation of grandeur and a desire to transform an Empire into a supranational entity, is well and truly dead. The Empire may have lived on, but so did the bonds it created. There is no longer any preferential policy towards France’s former African territories, even though there are still more or less business-like and unequal relationships. The 1960s were a kind of *no-man’s-land* between imperial policy and cooperative policy. As for the students who passed through the Maison de la FOM-Résidence Lucien Paye, many of them had a national destiny. In some cases, they were able to make the most of their dual culture—that of their country and that acquired in France at the time of the single parties and authoritarian regimes in Africa—and within a house they considered, after all, as their own, crystallizing their political affects in their opposition to colonial dynamics and to the various directors of the pavilion. They waged their struggle, at a time of one-party rule and authoritarian regimes in Africa,
in a country whose culture and language they had acquired in a school set up by colonization, and in a place they considered, after all, their own.

The Maison de la FOM was probably no more troubled than any other, although more or less racist remarks from the administration sometimes made African students a special case. The conflicts of the world were also played out at the CIUP, as these foreign students in diaspora lived and still live in a double temporality: that of France on the one hand—and in our case it was the 1968s—and that of their countries on the other. Hopes were soon followed by disillusionment.

**Conflict of Interest** The author has no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this chapter.

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<figure><img src="image_17.png" /></figure>
<figure><img src="image_18.png" /></figure>

# A Portuguese Pavilion at the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris: Between the Republic, Patronage and Protest (1924–1974)

Victor Pereira

On January 20, 1960, the Portuguese Minister of National Education, Francisco de Paula Leite Pinto, wrote to thank the President of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG), José de Azeredo Perdigão, for his initiative in enriching “the Cité Universitaire de Paris with a Portuguese residence. This is a subject that was studied many years ago by the Instituto de Alta Cultura<fnref n="1" /> (then known as the Junta de Educação

<footnote n="1">¹ Institute of High Culture.</footnote>

<footnote>V. Pereira (✉)
Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities/IN2PAST—Associate Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Heritage, Arts, Sustainability and Territory, Lisbon, Portugal
e-mail: victorpereira_ihc@fcsh.unl.pt</footnote>
*Nacional*<fnref n="2" />) but never materialized due to budgetary deficiencies”.<fnref n="3" /> These few lines, written by one of the key players in the educational and scientific policies of the Portuguese *Estado Novo* dictatorship (1933–1974), reveal that the desire for a Portuguese presence within the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris (CIUP) goes back to the very beginnings of the enterprise, during the 1920s. They do not, however, mention the project carried out earlier by one of the main opponents of the dictatorship, Afonso Costa. They also fail to mention the role played by Leite Pinto himself, then a young lecturer at the Sorbonne’s Portuguese Institute, in thwarting an initiative he considered ill-advised at the time. In short, these few lines represent a rewriting of history, a process to which André Honnorat was no stranger, quick to reformulate the origins and objectives of the CIUP according to circumstances and his own interests.

From the early 1920s onwards, a number of Portuguese players with different interests and visions wanted to build a Portuguese house at the CIUP. But until 1967, when the Maison des Étudiants Portugais opened, these initiatives ended in failure, or in far less ambitious achievements. It wasn’t until France and Portugal clashed over a Diana the Huntress sculpted by Jean-Antoine Houdon and other works of art collected by a wealthy oil tycoon of Armenian origin that a Portuguese house was built.

This contribution traces the history of the Maison des Étudiants Portugais up to 1974, the date of the Carnation Revolution that ushered in democracy in Portugal, paying close attention to failures and trials and error, and seeking to capture the viewpoints of the various players involved, be they politicians, diplomats, academics or residents. Built to contribute to “Luso-French cultural relations and intellectual exchanges”,<fnref n="4" /> the early years of this university residence were turbulent: an occupation in May–June 1968, protests in the anti-authoritarian mood of the “1968s” and the anti-fascist and anti-colonialist mobilizations led by Portuguese political exiles in France, and tensions between the FCG and the CIUP National Foundation that went so far as to call into question the commitment of the wealthy Portuguese institution.

<footnote n="2">² National Education Junta.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ F. de Paula Leite Pinto, to FCG President José de Azeredo Perdigão, January 20, 1960, Arquivo do Instituto Camões (now AIC), 390/24.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ *Ibid.*</footnote>
THE FIRST FAILURES OF A PORTUGUESE
PAVILION AT THE CIUPs

In the spirit of its founders, the CIUP should welcome first and foremost the countries that supported France during the Great War. The CIUP must contribute to the formation of a new world dominated by liberal democracies and founded on peace, collective security, understanding between peoples and collaboration between elites. It is first and foremost about the friendships and alliances that enabled France to win the war.<fnref n="5" /> It's hardly surprising, then, that Portugal was among the first countries to consider building a pavilion, and that the project's promoter was Afonso Costa, a former law professor in Coimbra and then Lisbon, the leading political figure in the Portuguese Republican movement and a key player in Portugal's entry into the conflict in 1916. After the end of the war, Afonso Costa moved to Paris. From March 1919, he was Portugal's representative at the Peace Conference and a regular participant in the activities of the League of Nations. In March 1926, he was even elected President of the League's General Assembly. In both France and Switzerland, he rubbed shoulders with the leading figures who shared the values of pacifism and the spirit of Geneva that guided André Honnorat. In the early 1920s, with the support of Paul Appell and Ernest Martinenche, he became involved in a project to build a Maison du Portugal at the CIUP: Portugal had to play a full part in the League of Nations (LoN) and assert itself in the concert of European nations. Erecting a pavilion at the CIUP, this “youth LoN”,<fnref n="6" /> was a foreign policy imperative for Costa, and in line with the sacrifices Portugal had made by entering the Great War, to demonstrate the regeneration of the country that the Republicans had been undertaking since 1910.

In March 1926, the Portuguese ambassador in Paris stated that “possession of the land within the ‘Cité Universitaire’ for the construction of the Maison Portugaise is already assured. The future pavilion will

<footnote n="5">⁵ See Guillaume Tronchet, “Diplomatie universitaire ou diplomatie culturelle? La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris entre deux rives (1920–1940)”, in Dzovinar Kévonian & Guillaume Tronchet (eds.), *La Babel étudiante. La cité internationale universitaire de Paris (1920–1950)*, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013, pp. 59–88.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ Frank Sereni, “Quelques réflexions sur les sociabilités étudiantes à la Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (années 1920–1950)”, in D. Kévonian & G. Tronchet (dir.), *La Babel étudiante, op. cit.* pp. 117–126.</footnote>
occupy an area of 1,074 square meters and will overlook the ‘boulevard’ Jourdan”.<fnref n="7" /> But a few days later, a military coup overthrew the parliamentary republic. The soldiers who took power had one thing in common: they wanted to put an end to the political hegemony of the Democratic Party, of which Afonso Costa continued to be one of the leading figures, despite his move to France. Somewhat paradoxically, it was in the unstable, indefinite context of the early years of the military dictatorship—which culminated in António de Oliveira Salazar’s seizure of power in 1932—that a new player appeared, initiating contacts with the CIUP’s leaders. In 1929, the Portuguese government founded the *Junta de Educação Nacional (National Education Junta)*, materializing an aspiration that several republican intellectuals and politicians had cherished.<fnref n="8" /> Indeed, for the Portuguese republicans, strongly influenced by their French counterparts, Portugal could only recover the ground it had lost on other European countries and found a democracy based on free men with the development of education and science.<fnref n="9" /> Higher education played a decisive role in this project. For republicans, it is essential that academics become true researchers, rather than mere teachers who merely repeat knowledge produced by others, usually abroad. In order to stimulate scientific activity, which was virtually non-existent at the time, several Republican politicians had attempted to create institutions to fund and guide research. However, the chronic instability of the First Republic prevented these initiatives from materializing. It was therefore under the military dictatorship that the organization was created. The two main driving forces behind JEN were two medical researchers, Celestino da Costa and Luís Simões Raposo.<fnref n="10" /> One of JEN’s missions is to grant scholarships to young researchers so that they can carry out their doctorate abroad or follow courses there, benefiting from facilities that do not exist in Portugal and the guidance of renowned researchers. The institution favors students who, on their return to Portugal, will be able to initiate

<footnote n="7">⁷ “A casa portuguesa na cité universitaire”, *Diário de Notícias*, March 19, 1926.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ On the Junta de Educação Nacional, see Quintino Manuel Junqueira Lopes, *A Junta de Educação Nacional (1929-1936). Traços de europeização na investigação científica em Portugal*, PhD thesis, Universidade de Évora, 2017.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ Maria Fernanda Rollo, Maria Inês Queiroz & Tiago Brandão, “Pensar e mandar fazer ciência. Princípios e pressupostos da criação da Junta de Educação Nacional na génese da política de organização científica do Estado Novo”, *Ler história*, n°61, 2011, pp. 105-145.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ Quintino Manuel Junqueira Lopes, *A Junta de..., op. cit.*</footnote>
new research, pass on up-to-date knowledge and join the research centers that JEN supports or even creates. Between 1929 and 1936, JEN financed the international stays of 148 students and researchers, mainly in France and Germany.<fnref n="11" /> Correspondence sent to JEN’s Secretary General, Luís Simões Raposo, by some of these Paris-based fellows highlights the difficulties they faced in finding accommodation and living with the resources allocated to them. One of the first scholarship holders sent abroad by JEN was Francisco Paula de Leite Pinto, who arrived in Paris at the end of October 1929 to study at the Sorbonne and astrophysics at the Meudon Observatory. In the very first letter he sent to Simões Raposo from Paris, he warned: “Don’t send to Paris a scholarship holder who is visiting Paris for the first time, and don’t send anyone after September”.<fnref n="12" /> In fact, all the accommodation in the Latin Quarter is occupied by French and foreign students. In one day he visited 53 hotels and 6 guesthouses. The difficulties of finding accommodation—common at the time, and one of the legitimizations of the founders of the CIUP<fnref n="13" />—affected other JEN scholarship holders in Paris, who were sometimes forced to move to the suburbs.

In January 1931, Celestino da Costa, vice-president of JEN, visited France and met André Honnorat who, failing the construction of a Portuguese pavilion or a Luso-Brazilian pavilion, offered to finance a chambre du Portugal within the Maison des Provinces de France (MPF) currently under construction. This suggestion was accepted by JEN, and from November 1933 onwards, the “chambre du Portugal” welcomed a scholarship holder—but no female scholarship holder, as the MPF did not accept female students—from JEN.<fnref n="14" /> On the other hand, the project to build a Portuguese pavilion seems to have been definitively buried. In 1932, Leite Pinto, who the previous year had become the first Portuguese lecturer at the Sorbonne, dissuaded the JEN from such an undertaking, calling into question Honnorat’s altruism. Assuming that JEN would

<footnote n="11">¹¹ *Idem*, p. 49.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² Francisco Paula de Leite Pinto to Luis Simões Raposo, November 5, 1929, AIC, 1345/5.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ Nicolas Manitakis, “‘La Cité universitaire tue le Quartier latin’ : enjeux sociaux et urbains d’une ville étudiante (années 1920–1930)”, in D. Kévonian, G. Tronchet (dir.), *La Babel étudiante...*, *op. cit.* pp. 89–99.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ Until 1940, this room was occupied by three JEN fellows: Manuel Zaluar-Nunes, mathematician, Manuel Tavares Chicó, art historian, and Orlando Ribeiro, geographer.</footnote>
never be able to send more than 30 scholarship holders to Paris each year, and that a pavilion needed at least 200 rooms to be profitable, Leite Pinto concluded that the considerable investment by a "nation that doesn't even have elementary school" would be equivalent to financing "a pavilion for the French". Leite Pinto, who, as we saw in the introduction, would later make a career within the *Estado Novo*, favored a nationalist perspective and mocked the principles defended by Honnorat: a "work of human solidarity, [of] spiritual communion between nations". What's more, in his view, residents were forced to endure "a semi-boarding regime incompatible with the mentality of the majority of Parisian higher education establishments". Among JEN scholarship holders, most of whom are over 25, few will agree to return "to the Cité at the sound of the bell. Even if we had our own pavilion, there would be Portuguese who would rather stay in the Latin Quarter than go to Porte d'Orléans".<fnref n="15" /> Leite Pinto became JEN General Secretary after the sudden death of Luís Simões Raposo in 1934. His negative opinion certainly contributed to the idea of a Portuguese pavilion at the CIUP being shelved. In the context of the formation and strengthening of the nationalist *Estado Novo* dictatorship, suspicious of foreign influences considered subversive, the sending of scholarship holders to France, particularly in the context of the Front Populaire, was considered politically dangerous.

## A UNIVERSITY RESIDENCE IS WORTH A DIANE DE HOUDON

The project to build a Portuguese pavilion at the CIUP was revived at the end of the 1950s, with players who seemed totally unaware of the projects of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1959, the fledgling Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, created three years earlier, offered to provide the University of Paris with a hall of residence built at the CIUP, and to ensure its upkeep. This initiative was part of the complex legacy of Calouste Gulbenkian, who died in Lisbon in 1955.<fnref n="16" /> An Armenian born in the Ottoman Empire in 1869, Calouste Gulbenkian made his fortune

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ F. de Paula Leite Pinto to Luís Simões Raposo, May 4, 1932, AIC, 1345/5.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ António Barreto (ed.), *Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Cinquante anos (1956-2006)*, Lisboa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2006.</footnote>
in oil and became one of the world's leading art collectors.<fnref n="17" /> Although he became an English citizen, he lived in France in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1942, Calouste Gulbenkian moved to Lisbon, taking advantage of the country's neutrality and tax advantages, while keeping his private Parisian hotel, which housed part of his art collection, including a Diane chas- seresse by Jean-Antoine Houdon acquired from the Hermitage Museum in 1930. Before his death, together with his Portuguese lawyer, José de Azeredo Perdigão, he drew up a will providing for the creation of a foundation bearing his name and based in Portugal. This foundation, headed by Azeredo Perdigão with the support of a majority Portuguese board of directors, was to support art, science, education and charity. Among the many problems that arose after Gulbenkian's death was that of the works of art remaining in France, which the foundation wanted to bring together in a museum in Lisbon. However, the French Museums Authority refused to allow the departure of certain works, considered to be priceless treasures. Negotiations lasted until 1959. In the face of French resistance, José Azeredo Perdigão agreed to transform Calouste Gulbenkian's private hotel into a cultural center and to build a univer- sity residence at the CIUP.<fnref n="18" /> An initial deed of gift was signed by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation on October 6, 1960. The Founda- tion undertook "to build a student residence with around 100 rooms within the Cité Universitaire de Paris, to provide it with all the furniture and equipment necessary for its operation (...) and to set up a working capital fund and a reserve fund for the benefit of this residence".<fnref n="19" /> The Maison des étudiants portugais (MEP)—as it is officially known—finally opened its doors on October 16, 1967. The delay was caused by a dispute between the Fondation nationale de la CIUP and the Préfecture de la Seine, which considered that the Portuguese residence was too close to

<footnote n="17">17 Jonathan Conlin, *Mr Five per cent. The many lives of Calouste Gulbenkian, the world's richest man*, London, Profile Books, 2019.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18 Marcello Mathias, *Correspondência Marcello Mathias/Salazar (1947-1968)*, Lisboa, Difel, 1984, pp. 632-633.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">19 *Minutes of the Paris University Council, November 28, 1960, Archives nationales (now AN), AJ/16/7044.*</footnote>
the ring road currently under construction.<fnref n="20" /> It was officially inaugurated on November 20, in the presence of numerous French and Portuguese personalities. At an FCG Board meeting on July 25, 1967, Francisco Leite Pinto (who, after serving as Minister of Education from 1955 to 1961, became Rector of the Technical University of Lisbon from 1963 to 1966, before joining the FCG Board in 1967) expressed concern that the inauguration might be disrupted by an “unpleasant demonstration of a political nature”. In his opinion, the Foundation must take into account “the delicacy and complexity of the problems that may arise with regard, in general, to the attitude of the several dozen Portuguese students who, for political reasons, are today exiled in France and who, situated in their majority in the political camp of the extreme left, constitute a strong opposition movement to the Portuguese regime”. He strongly recommends careful selection of residents to “avoid the introduction of undesirable disruptive elements, or even agitators”.<fnref n="21" /> To ensure the docility of residents, the Board of Directors decided to give priority to FCG scholarship holders, students and/or artists who depended on subsidies granted to them by Portuguese institutions and who, for the most part, were destined to return to Portugal. The latter must have both “moral and scientific qualities”,<fnref n="22" /> morality being understood as synonymous with political docility. All residents are required to sign a document stating that they have read the internal regulations and agree to abide by them. This document is inspired by the apolitical values advocated by the CIUP’s founders, and is in line with the “formal prohibition on residents engaging in political activities at the Cité”<fnref n="23" />: “whatever their personal

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Loïc Vadelorge, “Emprises sur la ville. Les relations entre la Cité universitaire, Paris et Gentilly (1945-1985)”, in D. Kévonian, G. Tronchet (dir.), *Le Campus-monde : La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris de 1945 aux années 2000*, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2022, pp. 39-52.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">²¹ FCG Board of Directors, July 25 1967, Arquivo da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (now AFCG), FCG PRES 1170.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² J. de Azeredo Perdigão to J. Veríssimo Serrão, Director of the Portuguese Cultural Center in Paris, April 26, 1968, AFCG, FCG PRES 1170.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ Guillaume Tronchet, “‘La Cité en ébullition’. Jeunesse étudiante et action collective à la Cité internationale universitaire de Paris, de 1945 aux années 1968: contestations, mobilisations et circulations”, in D. Kévonian & G. Tronchet (dir.), *Le Campus-monde...*, op. cit. pp. 71-120.</footnote>
opinions, residents must refrain from any individual or collective action or demonstration of a political nature”.<fnref n="24" />

These fears, expressed by Leite Pinto and shared by the other members of the Board of Directors, stemmed from the boiling point of the student movement in Lisbon and Coimbra from 1962 onwards. Protesting against the lack of freedom that prevented them from organizing autonomously, students multiplied their forms of action: meetings, hunger strikes, occupations of university premises.<fnref n="25" /> These movements were systematically repressed by the authorities. Several students were arrested and expelled from university. Dozens of students went into exile in France, Switzerland, Belgium, England and Eastern Europe<fnref n="26" /> to pursue their studies, continue their fight against the dictatorship and avoid their military obligations at a time when colonial wars had broken out from 1961 onwards. During the 1960s, Portuguese exile in France underwent a process of radicalization. Many students in France joined Maoist movements, challenging the Salazarist dictatorship, the colonial wars initiated in 1961, and the Portuguese Communist Party, accused of revisionism.

## THE (RELATIVE) CALM BEFORE THE STORM

In November 1967, the House of Portuguese Students, directed by Eduardo Rogado Dias, was home to 56 Portuguese and 66 international students, researchers and artists on scholarships from the FCG or other Portuguese institutions such as the Instituto de Alta Cultura (Institute of High Culture) or the Junta de Energia Nuclear (Nuclear Energy Board). Although the inauguration was not disrupted, a few days before it took place, the General Delegate reported “the start of a fire, certainly caused by a malevolent act (...) outside the House of Portuguese Students”.<fnref n="27" /> However, the residence’s first few months seem

<footnote n="24">²⁴ House rules for Portuguese students, AFCG, PRES 05814.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ On the student movement in 1962-1974: Alvaro Garrido, *Movimento estudantil e crise do Estado Novo. Coimbra 1962*, Coimbra, Minerva, 1996; Miguel Cardina, *A Tradição da Contestação. Resistência Estudantil em Coimbra no Marcelismo*, Coimbra, Angelus Novus, 2008; Guya Accornero, *The Revolution before the Revolution. Late authoritarianism and student protest in Portugal*, New York/Oxford, Berghahn, 2016.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶ Victor Pereira, “Les luttes des insoumis, réfractaires et déserteurs en France”, *Hommes & Migrations*, n°1330, 2020, pp. 99-104.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">²⁷ Report from the General Delegate of the CIUP, November 10, 1967, AN, 20090013/1094.</footnote>
rather calm, if we are to believe the regular reports sent by its director to José Azeredo Perdigão. After just a few weeks of operation, the director is delighted with the behavior of the residents and their “perfect respect for the discipline imposed (which, incidentally, is the most rigorous in the Cité Universitaire)”.<fnref n="28" /> Eduardo Rogado Dias is also in favor of relaxing certain rules, notably those concerning freedom of visit between male and female residents, whose spaces are strictly separated. While the Residents’ Committee—elected at the beginning of 1968—formulated this with, in his words, “the greatest correction and wisdom”, the director defends that “the most prudent and pedagogically correct attitude would be to anticipate events, allowing what should really be allowed, given the circumstances, thus retaining absolute control of the situation”.<fnref n="29" /> This flexibility was prompted by the mobilizations that had taken place in Antony in 1965, in Nanterre in 1967, and by the demands expressed in several houses of the CIUP.<fnref n="30" /> In his first reports, Rogado Dias also expressed his support for residents’ cultural activities. He supported residents’ initiatives to organize concerts and lectures. However, within a few months of its opening, the residence did not enjoy a good reputation among students opposed to the regime. On May 1er 1968, one of them described it to his parents as “a refuge for the worst kind of pides [Portuguese political police agents], from whom only the director and secretary escape”. According to this student, “an unbearable concentration camp regime reigns there, which in less than two months of existence was already known within the University of Paris, under the name of ‘the student barracks’”.<fnref n="31" />

However, the MEP has not remained aloof from the mobilizations that have been multiplying within the CIUP since the beginning of 1968.<fnref n="32" /> Protests were brewing at CIUP. The issue of non-mixed residences and

<footnote n="28">²⁸ Report from the Director of MEP to the President of FCG, January 10, 1968, AFCG, PRES 05814.</footnote>

<footnote n="29">²⁹ *Ibid.*</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰ G. Tronchet, “La cité..., *op. cit.*</footnote>

<footnote n="31">³¹ José Manuel Zaluar Nunes to José Basílio, May 1er 1968, Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais/Torre do Tombo (now IAN/TT), Arquivo da PIDE/DGS, SC12377 CI (2), NT 7650.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³² Matthieu Gillabert “‘Cité en lutte’! Transferts culturels et réappropriations des révoltes à la cité internationale”, *Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps*, n°127-128, 2018, pp. 36-45; G. Tronchet, “‘Cité..., *op. cit.*</footnote>
the authorizations that young women had to request to host boys was raised. Some students also denounce the authoritarianism of the directors and demand to be involved in the management of the residences. These demands were combined with denunciations of American imperialism in Vietnam and dictatorships in Southern Europe and Latin America. For example, on April 24, 1968, several dozen students gathered at the Maison des Étudiants Portugais to demand “the unification of the city’s regulations on the liberal regime of circulation, assembly and association instituted in some pavilions”.<fnref n="33" /> According to the Portuguese Embassy in France, informed by historian Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão, director of the Portuguese cultural center created by the FCG in Paris, some of these students took advantage of the opportunity to “shout against the Portuguese political regime and the Gulbenkian Foundation”.<fnref n="34" /> They then moved on to the U.S. pavilion, which they invaded after smashing the windows. Among the “troublemakers”,<fnref n="35" /> according to Veríssimo Serrão, was the president of the MEP’s “residents’ committee”, João Manuel Fiadeiro Santos Marques, a former communist activist who, from 1967 onwards, became close to the Maoist militants of the Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Committee. Santos Marques joined several committees forming within the CIUP: the Comité de Liaison Anti-Impérialiste (CLAI) and the Comité de Liaison Inter-Pavillons (CLIP).<fnref n="36" />

On May 2, 1968, José Manuel Fiadeiro Santos Marques passed on to the Director of the MEP the results of a consultation carried out with just over half the male and female residents: 97% of female residents questioned (out of 29) and 90% of male and female residents (out of 59) wanted free movement within the residence, identical for both sexes. Faced with the demands expressed since the beginning of 1968, as exemplified by the actions of Pierre Marthelot, General Delegate of the CIUP, the FCG tried to take the lead in limiting the protests, following the advice of Rogado Dias. The first meeting of the MEP Board of Directors was convened on May 3, 1968, just as the occupation of the Sorbonne was beginning. It was chaired by the Portuguese ambassador to Paris,

<footnote n="33">³³ “Des étudiants forcent les portes du pavillon américain”, *Le Monde*, April 26, 1968.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴ Chargé d'affaire of the Portuguese Embassy in Paris, to the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs, April 25, 1968, Arquivo Histórico-Diplomático (henceforth AHD), PEA 521.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵ *Idem*.</footnote>

<footnote n="36">³⁶ M. Gillabert “‘Cité en lutte…, op. cit. p. 39.”</footnote>
Marcelo Mathias, who had played an important role in the creation of the Maison, and included among its members the Portuguese consul in Paris. The Board of Directors abolishes article 28 of the internal regulations, which separated the areas devoted to male and female residents. From now on, residents may welcome other people into their rooms between 1 and 11 pm. However, visitors must identify themselves to the concierge or janitor, and residents receiving guests must collect them from the lobby.

When the events of May broke out, many students from the CIUP in general, and from the Maison des Étudiants Portugais in particular, were already mobilized. However, it would be wrong to conclude that this was the case for all MEP residents. Many remain carefully aloof from all mobilizations and claim to be continuing their studies without a hitch.<fnref n="37" />

“TODAY, MAY 22, 1968, WE REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS AND STUDENTS DECLARE THIS HOUSE THE FIRST FREE TERRITORY OF PORTUGAL”

On the morning of May 23, 1968, Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão, sent a telex to FCG headquarters in Lisbon, informing them that the MEP “was occupied yesterday evening at 7.30 pm by 40 so-called French, Spanish and Portuguese students and a few workers. A large majority of residents wanted to react, but the invaders blocked the secure entrance door to the terrace and cut off the telephone. Rogado Dias and his family are locked in their apartment”.<fnref n="38" /> According to Vasco de Castro, one of the members of the Portuguese section of the Workers-Students Action Committee (Comité d’action travailleurs-étudiants), which formed at Censier University on May 16, 1968,<fnref n="39" /> the idea of occupying the Maison des étudiants portugais had its origins in the occupation of the Collège d’Espagne on

<footnote n="37">³⁷ Interview with Armando Machado, Lisbon, August 6, 2020.</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ Telex from Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão to the President of the FCG, May 23, 1968, AFCG, PRES 1170. Fernando Pereira Marques, one of the occupants of the Portuguese Students' House, claims that it was not the occupants who cut the telephone wires. See Fernando Pereira Marques, *A praia sob a calçada. Maio de 68 e a 'geração de 60', Lisboa, Ancora editora, 2005.</footnote>

<footnote n="39">³⁹ Jacques Baynac, *Mai retrouvé. Contribution à l'histoire du mouvement révolutionnaire du 3 mai au 16 juin 1968*, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1978, p. 143.</footnote>
May 18. Two Spanish teachers encouraged him to follow suit.<fnref n="40" /> Although the House is owned by the FCG and therefore not directly dependent on the Portuguese state, the symbolism seems strong.<fnref n="41" /> On May 22, several members of the Portuguese section of the Workers-Students Action Committee entered the MEP, declaring that they were occupying it. Although they counted on some support among the residents, and the director of the house was unable to oppose them (and seemed to have expected this occupation, as suggested by the correspondence he had exchanged with the foundation in the preceding hours), some international residents resisted, and the occupiers had to seek help in other houses. They took control of the residence in the evening and quickly sought to identify any spies, as the residence had a reputation, as we have seen, for being a den of political police informers. The very next day, two residents—a Portuguese and a German—were evicted on suspicion of spying on their comrades. The Occupation Committee quickly issued a leaflet:

Comrades,

Workers occupy factories and workplaces. Students occupy universities, high schools and student residences. As part of this struggle, on May 22 the Sorbonne's workers-students liaison committee occupied the Maison des étudiants portugais de la cité universitaire. This house, until now a residence for the privileged, is now open to all workers and students, and is now called: Maison des travailleurs et étudiants portugais (House of Portuguese workers and students). For the purposes of conviviality, information and free discussion of all problems (...). Open day and night.<fnref n="42" />

A general meeting attended by some residents, occupants and a few Portuguese exiles living in Paris was held on May 23. The occupation of the house seems to count on the support of only a minority of residents. Despite his activism in the preceding months, Santos Marques

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ Vasco de Castro. *Discordante e indocumentado. Conversas com Mário Beja Santos*, (unpublished), 2013, p. 262.</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ On the reactions of Portuguese living in France to the events of May-June 1968: Victor Pereira, “Les Portugais en France pendant mai-juin 1968”, *Revista de História das Ideias*, vol.38, 2020, pp. 269-305.</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴² Tract [undated], IAN/TT, Arquivo da PIDE/DGS, SC 10254 CI (2), NT 7591.</footnote>
initially “tried to delay”<fnref n="43" /> the occupation, but ended up showing solidarity with the members of the occupation committee from the Sorbonne, without however taking a very active part in the occupation. Most of the residents—especially those from Portugal, who had received scholarships from the FCG and other institutions—were afraid to take part in the occupation, either out of conviction or with a view to their future return home. They fear being arrested and/or losing their scholarships. In the days preceding the occupations of other residences, Eduardo Rogado Dias had “maintained a dialogue with the residents to create a sense of responsibility”<fnref n="44" />: he invited them not to mobilize. During the first days of the occupation, Rogado Dias remained in the residence, confining himself to his apartments to avoid any damage. The director of the Paris cultural center even urged residents opposed to the occupation not to leave the premises: “Residents must stay and defend the Maison des étudiants portugais (...). Abandonment of the House of Portuguese Students by the residents present would mean victory for the invaders”.<fnref n="45" /> However, Rogado Dias ended up surreptitiously leaving the residence on May 31, having waited several days in vain for any police intervention. Other residents ended up leaving the house and staying in hotels.

Most of the occupants have long-standing militant experience. Indeed, several of them were active in the student movements that took place in Portugal from 1962 onwards. In France, many of these former students became involved in movements and associations that rejected both the Salazarist dictatorship and the PCP. In these associations—such as the Ligue portugaise de l’enseignement et de la culture populaire or the Club franco-portugais de la jeunesse—they try to politicize immigrant workers through conferences, concerts and plays.<fnref n="46" /> Most of the occupiers are linked to Maoist movements, but also to groups that advocate armed struggle and take their cue from Cuba, such as the

<footnote n="43">⁴³ Interrogation of João Manuel Fiadeiro Santos Marques, February 8, 1969, IAN-TT, Arquivo da PIDE/DGS, SC GT 733, NT 1428, pasta 1.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ Telex from J. Veríssimo Serrão to FCG President, May 21, 1968, AFCG, PRES 1170.</footnote>

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵ Telex from J. Veríssimo Serrão to FCG President, May 23, 1968, AFCG, PRES 1170.</footnote>

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ V. Pereira, *Les exilés politiques portugais en France*. Master’s thesis, University of Rouen, 2000.</footnote>
*Liga d'União e de Acção Revolucionária* (League of Union and Revolutionary Action—LUAR).<fnref n="47" /> One movement seems to be absent: the PCP and the student organization it dominated at the time, the União dos Estudantes Portugueses em França (Union of Portuguese Students in France, UEPF). Like many of their French comrades, Portuguese communists were destabilized by the May–June 1968 movements. The absence of PCP militants was not only due to prejudice against student action. Several of them were living clandestinely in France, such as PCP secretary-general Álvaro Cunhal.<fnref n="48" /> For the Portuguese Communists, the MEP was also considered an unsafe place, as residents were suspected of informing the Portuguese political police. The party’s priority of fighting the dictatorship and safeguarding its clandestine apparatus in France, considered essential for coordinating militant action in Portugal and abroad, partly explains the absence of PCP members. Nevertheless, the occupants targeted both the Portuguese dictatorship and the PCP. The names given to the rooms in the Portuguese house reveal the occupiers’ influences: Marx and Engels room, Che Guevara room, but also Bento Gonçalves room, former general secretary of the PCP, a figure recuperated by Maoist militants who claimed to be reforming the real Communist Party and thus implicitly criticizing Álvaro Cunhal for betraying the party and the workers’ movement. The graffiti found on the walls at the end of the occupation also attest to the ideological diversity of the occupants, as well as the presence of French, Spanish and Brazilian individuals. The slogans, symbols of the liberation of speech during May–June ’68, are both those found in other places of protest—such as the Sorbonne or the Odéon—but also refer to the struggles waged against South European and Latin American dictatorships. In many graffiti, the emphasis is on the use of violence to bring down capitalism, in line with the aspirations of the Maoist and leftist movements formed in exile. These slogans also criticize the PCP’s alleged “wait-and-see” attitude, which, according to these movements, is reduced to sterile opposition to the dictatorship.

During the 21 days of occupation, several general assemblies punc-
tuated the life of the Maison de étudiants et des travailleurs portugais.

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷ Fernando Pereira Marques, *Uma nova concepção de luta. Materiais para a história da LUAR e da resistência armada em Portugal*, Lisboa, Tinta-da-China, 2016.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ V. Pereira, “Álvaro Cunhal em Paris: internacionalismo, exílio e emigração”, in José Neves (ed.), *Alvaro Cunhal. Política, História e Estética*, Lisboa, Tinta-da-China, 2013, pp. 67–78.</footnote>
A draft statute advocating co-management of the residence is proposed, and several committees oversee the occupants' activities: a political and cultural agitation committee, a management, hygiene and supplies committee, a student-worker action committee, a security committee and a coordination committee. The occupants' aim was to support student and worker struggles, and to act as an intermediary between students and Portuguese workers, some of whom were frightened by events they likened to a civil war.<fnref n="49" /> The house was also intended to be an open space, and a number of cultural initiatives were proposed. Luís Cília, exiled in France since 1964, gave a concert.<fnref n="50" /> One of the occupants, Fernando Pereira Marques, remembers the cinema sessions organized by Carlos Saboga, including the screening of Frédéric Rossif's film *Mourir à Madrid*. The theater, which several occupants had been practicing in France for several months, was also present. The first performance in France of the play *Le chant du fantoche lusitanien*, by the famous playwright Peter Weiss, is said to have taken place during the occupation. As was the case at the Sorbonne and the Odéon, numerous debates were organized. On May 28, for example, the theme was “Prospects for revolution in Portugal? Bourgeois democracy or popular democracy? National uprising or people's war?”<fnref n="51" /> Here again, there was implicit criticism of the strategy developed by the PCP since Álvaro Cunhal's escape from prison in 1960.<fnref n="52" /> While not completely rejecting the use of violence, Cunhal argued that the dictatorship would fall following a “national uprising”, which would only be possible after long and patient work with the popular masses. The Maoist movements and the LUAR, on the other hand, advocate immediate recourse to armed struggle.

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ V. Pereira, “Les Portugais en France pendant mai-juin 1968”, *Revista de História das Ideias*, vol.38, 2020, pp. 269–305.</footnote>

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ Ana Aranha, Carlos Ademar (eds.), *Memórias do exílio*, Lisboa, Parsifal, 2018, pp. 125–142.</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ Fernando Pereira Marques, *A praia..., op. cit.* p. 125.</footnote>

<footnote n="52">⁵² José Pacheco Pereira, *Álvaro Cunhal. Uma biografia política*. vol.4. *O secretário-geral*, Lisboa, Temas e debates, 2015.</footnote>
WITHDRAWALS AND REPRESSIONS

On June 12, the Occupy Committee announced its withdrawal from the MEP. A leaflet claimed that its aims had been achieved, in particular "to attack and openly confront, through this coup de main, the fascist or militarist regimes reigning in the countries of origin of these pavilions", "to demolish the political espionage networks and fascist nuclei, and to expel the agents provocateurs and police who had set up shop in this housing estate with the complicity of the administrations". From then on, the committee considered that maintaining the occupations would only constitute "an act of political wait-and-see, of oratorical self-defense fully foreseen and framed within the overall strategy of the Gaullist counter-revolution". The struggle must continue elsewhere: "militants will be more useful on other fronts and must move on to higher forms of organization and struggle".<fnref n="53" /> In the days that followed, other houses were emptied of their occupants, sometimes after discreet negotiations with CIUP officials, who feared that other occupants might take advantage of a moment's latency. As Guillaume Tronchet notes, occupants from countries ruled by dictatorships probably fear police intervention, arrest and possible eviction.<fnref n="54" />

After the occupants left, normalcy did not return immediately. On June 14, an assembly of the residents of the Maison des étudiants portugais brought together 50 people (a third of all tenants). A large majority voted in favor of a motion calling for the establishment of "co-management bodies with at least equal representation (students, administration) as a first step, and which could go as far as the self-management of the House of Portuguese Students by the students".<fnref n="55" /> However, Eduardo Rogado Dias quickly resumed his duties to prevent these co-management or self-management projects from developing. Without a hitch, the house was closed on July 15 for renovation work.

While the occupation was still taking place, repression was in the offing. As early as May 25, Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão advised the FCG President that "until the responsibility of each scholarship holder in the

<footnote n="53">⁵³ “To Remaining Comrades” leaflet, June 12, 1968, IAN/TT, A Arquivo da PIDE/DGS, SC 10254 CI(2), NT 7591.</footnote>

<footnote n="54">⁵⁴ G. Tronchet, “Cité en ébullition...”, op. cit. p. 106.</footnote>

<footnote n="55">⁵⁵ Resolution of the residents of the House of Portuguese Students in general assembly, June 14, 1968, AN, 20090013/1094.</footnote>
condemnable occupation (...) is clarified (...) nothing should be decided with regard to scholarship renewal applications. The problem of the selection of residents, including scholarship holders, must be firmly addressed if the Foundation wishes the House of Portuguese Students not to suffer further provocations in the future”.<fnref n="56" /> In the days that followed, he wrote notes on each of the foundation’s scholarship holders, distinguishing between those who opposed the occupation and those who did not, or even collaborated with it. The latter, in his opinion, should have their grants not renewed or even cut off as soon as possible. As for Rogado Dias, he reports to the Prefecture of Police the names of “15 of the 30 members of the occupation committee”.<fnref n="57" /> In the following weeks and months, several of the occupants were evicted or placed under house arrest. Some of the occupiers, such as Carlos Saboga, José Barrias and Manuel Areias, feared deportation to Portugal and left for Italy. Contrary to its reputation among Portuguese political exiles, the PIDE had very few sources of information about what was happening in France in May–June 1968. A letter sent by a Portuguese theology student to a parish priest in Braga on July 10, 1968, in which he describes the events of May–June, the occupation of the Sorbonne and that of the MEP. In this letter, intercepted by the political police, the student gave the names of many of the occupiers, enabling the PIDE to issue arrest warrants. In the months that followed, some of the individuals mentioned in the letter were arrested and interrogated when they returned to Portugal.

## A SIMMERING CONFLICT BETWEEN THE CIUP NATIONAL FOUNDATION AND THE CALOUSTE GULBENKIAN FOUNDATION

Throughout the occupation, Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão harshly criticized the management of the National Foundation, and in particular Pierre Marthelot, who, in his opinion, had “acted in a rather dubious manner”, even “cowardly”.<fnref n="58" /> Veríssimo Serrão would have liked the police to intervene to stop the occupation immediately and imprison those responsible for the damage. The events of May–June 1968 severely damaged relations between the CIUP National Foundation and the FCG. The wave

<footnote n="56">⁵⁶ J. Veríssimo Serrão to FCG President, May 27, 1968, AFCG, FCG PRES 1170.</footnote>

<footnote n="57">⁵⁷ J. Veríssimo Serrão to FCG President, June 8, 1968, AFCG, FCG PRES 1170.</footnote>

<footnote n="58">⁵⁸ J. Veríssimo Serrão to FCG President, June 5, 1968, AFCG, FCG PRES 1170.</footnote>
of occupation prompted Pierre Marthelot to push for changes that the FCG, like other governments and foreign foundations, resisted. In particular, he wanted to rebalance the Board of Directors, which had been chosen by the FCG, and introduce co-management within the MEP. These two objectives were put forward as early as June 6 in a memo from the National Foundation. Drawing conclusions from the occupations and protests, this document argues that “a means must be found to ensure that there are no more direct interventions by foreign embassies or governments in the houses of the CIUP. The political surveillance of residents, the intervention of outside political police forces, cannot be supported under any circumstances by residents, and moreover pose many problems when these interventions occur in a French university campus”.<fnref n="59" /> In the months that followed, Pierre Marthelot tried to change the composition of the Board of Directors of the Maison des Étudiants Portugais, which, “with a few exceptions, was made up exclusively of members of the Gulbenkian Foundation for the Portuguese, and even the French, part”.<fnref n="60" /> In the first letter he sent to Azeredo Perdigão after the occupation, after regretting the damage and praising the “coolness and skill of Mr. Rogado Dias”, Marthelot proposed changes to the MEP Board of Directors, believing that “sufficient space had not been kept in the French section for independent university personalities, as is normally the case in other boards”.<fnref n="61" /> Marthelot proposed inviting two French academics to the Board of Directors: Raymond Cantel, then Dean of the Faculty of Letters at Poitiers, and Andrée Mansuy, Senior Lecturer at the University of Vincennes, who, for Marthelot, ensured the presence of a “female personality”<fnref n="62" /> in a house that housed female residents. These two academics, more specialists in Brazil than Portugal and therefore less dependent on the FCG to fund their research, replaced Robert Gulbenkian and the FCG’s legal advisor, who were not academics. Marthelot hopes to depoliticize the Board of Directors—although Mathias and the Portuguese Consul in Paris are still members—and reduce the number of members too closely linked to the Foundation.

<footnote n="59">⁵⁹ Note on the “situation at the Cité universitaire on June 6 [1968]”, AN, 20090013/513.</footnote>

<footnote n="60">⁶⁰ P. Marthelot to the Rector of the University of Paris, September 11, 1968, AN, 20090013/1094.</footnote>

<footnote n="61">⁶¹ P. Marthelot to the President of the FCG, July 25, 1968, AN, 20090013/1094</footnote>

<footnote n="62">⁶² P. Marthelot to the President of the FCG, January 15, 1969, AN, 20090013/1094</footnote>
Marthelot also wanted the FCG to introduce the principle of co-management within the Maison des étudiants portugais. In the aforementioned memo of June 6, 1968, it is stated that “in the houses, we can only envisage a large place for co-determination formulas which remain to be defined. We must also take into account the changes made to the notion of neutrality, which must be replaced by that of freedom of expression, subject to precautions to be taken to maintain public order and respect for consciences”.<fnref n="63" /> However, as far as FCG officials and Rogado Dias are concerned, the residents do not want any further changes: the concessions on visiting rights and freedom of movement within the Maison granted at the beginning of May are quite sufficient. In their view, the occupation was not the result of residents’ aspirations: the occupiers were for the most part strangers to the CIUP, and their actions were part and parcel of the events of May–June 1968. This rhetoric enabled the FCG to refuse any change and to conceal the fact that it was, in Paris, one of the symbols of the dictatorship. The FCG—both in Lisbon and Paris—thus disapproved of the reforms initiated by Marthelot at the end of 1968 and the co-management practices in line with the Rivero report. For the start of the 1968/1969 academic year, residents were carefully selected: those who had collaborated with the occupation or not opposed it vigorously enough were not allowed to stay. The director of the MEP also ensured that the residents’ committee was made up of loyal members. As a result, the MEP experienced little turbulence during the 1968–1969 academic year. The following academic year, however, saw the outbreak of numerous tensions. The resident committee elected in the autumn resigned in February 1970, refusing to “endorse a semblance of democracy and dialogue that does not exist in reality”.<fnref n="64" /> This resignation enabled a French student to present himself as the “sole elected representative of the residents of the Portuguese students’ house”<fnref n="65" /> and, supported by a few residents, to challenge the director’s “repressive and

<footnote n="63">⁶³ Note on the “situation at the Cité universitaire on June 6 [1968]”, AN, 20090013/513.</footnote>

<footnote n="64">⁶⁴ Ex-comité des résidents de la Maison des étudiants portugais au conseil de gestion de la CIUP, March 2, 1970, AN, 20090013/1094.</footnote>

<footnote n="65">⁶⁵ Jacques Lhomet to the CIUP management board, March 2, 1970, AN, 20090013/1094.</footnote>
policing methods”.<fnref n="66" /> These tenants called for student participation in the house’s Board of Directors and Admissions Committee, and for greater freedom of movement and visiting rights within the house, in terms that Rogado Dias considered disrespectful. During this conflict, Rogado Dias also regretted that the National Foundation did not support him, thus undermining his authority. In February 1970, in barely veiled terms, Azeredo Perdigão threatened to stop funding the home. Indeed, beyond his demands and protests, in February 1970 the residents’ committee invited Pierre Jalée to give a lecture on imperialism in Africa and Portugal’s role. In a telegram sent to Marthelot, Azeredo Perdigão considered it “inadmissible that a residence for Portuguese students abroad maintained by a Portuguese foundation officially declared to be of general public utility, with all its inherent advantages, should be transformed into a place for political propaganda against Portugal. (...) If, however, the management of the CIUP cannot prevent the MEP from being transformed into an instrument for attacking Portuguese policy in any of its aspects, the foundation will be obliged to review the *modus vivendi* which currently governs its relations with the Cité internationale”.<fnref n="67" /> Azeredo Perdigão saw this invitation as a provocation, all the more so since in June 1969 the CIUP National Foundation had not prevented the holding of a “week on Portugal and the liberation struggles in Guinea, Angola and Mozambique”, which included film screenings, a round-table discussion with representatives of the PAIGC, MPLA, FRELIMO, Gérard Challiand, Basil Davidson and Jean Mettas, and a performance of Peter Weiss’s play “Le chant du fantôche lusitanien”.

After the exclusion of student protesters, calm seemed to return to the MEP by the end of 1970. For example, after the assassination of PAIGC leader Amilcar Cabral on January 20, 1973, there were no protests at the MEP. Instead, a meeting was held at the Maison de la Tunisie to “denounce the barbaric and bloodthirsty methods skillfully devised by the imperialists and all reactionaries against the leaders and militants of patriotic and revolutionary organizations”.<fnref n="68" /> This lull also contrasted with

<footnote n="66">⁶⁶ Demands of the residents’ assembly of the Portuguese Students’ House on March 16, 1970, AN, 20090013/1094.</footnote>

<footnote n="67">⁶⁷ Telegram from José Azeredo Perdigão to Pierre Marthelot, February 12, 1970, AN, 20090013/1094.</footnote>

<footnote n="68">⁶⁸ Flyer “Grand meeting Thursday, 25 in homage to Amilcar Cabral assassinated on 20-1-1973”, Fundação Mário Soares; Arquivo Amilcar Cabral, Pasta 07200.174.008.</footnote>
the strong radicalization of student mobilizations in Portugal, but also
within Portuguese exile in France. However, the young Portuguese exiles
seemed to be moving away from a place they considered out of their
depth, preferring the living and working environments of the hundreds
of thousands of Portuguese immigrants residing in France at the time,
whom they were seeking to politicize and mobilize.<fnref n="69" />

In his report on the 1975–1976 academic year, Eduardo Rogado Dias congratulates himself: “Once again this year, our house has disproved the rule that any political incident in a country necessarily has immediate repercussions in that country’s representative house at the CIUP. The coup d’état [crossed out and replaced by ‘Revolution’] in Portugal on April 25 1974, and the political crises that followed until November 1975, with its successive shifts to the left and to the right, did not provoke any turbulent reaction among the residents of the house; and the wisdom of the principal parties concerned definitely rebuffed the usual attempts from outside”.<fnref n="70" /> However, the MEP did not remain completely aloof from the events in Portugal, which were widely echoed in France.<fnref n="71" /> On December 5, 1974, at the MEP, officers from the Armed Forces Movement organized a debate on the political and economic situation in Portugal, attended by around 200 students. According to the Renseignements Généraux, “differences of opinion arose between the military and certain young Portuguese leftists present in the room, who apparently did not appreciate the policy of austerity and rigor advocated by the speakers”.<fnref n="72" /> Nevertheless, in the weeks following April 25 1974, many young Portuguese exiles returned to Portugal, now free to return to their homeland<fnref n="73" /> and, for many, eager to take part in the Revolution taking place there. From this perspective, the calm of the MEP is easily explained. It’s a far cry from the theaters invested by the actors with the most militant capital.

<footnote n="69">⁶⁹ V. Pereira, “Portugais en lutte. Une mobilisation paradoxale”, *Plein droit*, n°100, 2014, pp. 40–44.</footnote>

<footnote n="70">⁷⁰ Activity report, House of Portuguese Students, 1975-1976, AN, 20090013/1094.</footnote>

<footnote n="71">⁷¹ V. Pereira, “Quel 25 avril pour les émigrés? The Portuguese state and migrants in France during the Carnation Revolution”, *Migrance*, n°43, 2014, pp. 43–55.</footnote>

<footnote n="72">⁷² Note from the Renseignements Généraux, December 16, 1974, AN 19880312/18.</footnote>

<footnote n="73">⁷³ However, draft dodgers, draft resisters and deserters had to regularize their situation with the military authorities. V. Pereira, “La révolution des Œillets et (le début de) la fin de l’exil”, in *Exils. Témoignages d’exilés et de déserteurs portugais*, Paris, Chandeigne, 2024, pp. 155–172.</footnote>
The Carnation Revolution also saw a gradual improvement in relations between the CIUP National Foundation and the FCG. Since June 1970, to prevent the National Foundation from taking control of MEP affairs, Azeredo Perdigão stopped convening meetings of the Board of Directors, much to Pierre Marthelot's dismay. In July 1973, the latter regretted this absence, which “prevents normal consultation between the founding and French authorities at this level”. The General Delegate went further, suggesting that the composition of the Board of Directors be reformulated: Azeredo Perdigão would take over as Chairman from Marcello Mathias (who was no longer Portugal's ambassador in Paris, but had become a director of the FCG, responsible for its international department). Marthelot reiterates his argument formulated in 1968: this modification “would in particular avoid the ambiguity that certain malicious observers do not fail to use by considering this house as a dependency of the embassy, which it is in no way”.<fnref n="74" /> This proposal seemed to displease Azeredo Perdigão, who curtly replied to the delegate general. However, after the revolution, which caused turbulence within the FCG and notably the departure of Marcelo Mathias from its Board of Directors, Azeredo Perdigão agreed to add an amendment to the deed of gift, modifying the composition of the Board of Directors in order to “depoliticize” it.<fnref n="75" /> The Board is now chaired by Azeredo Perdigão rather than Marcello Mathias. Members appointed by the FCG should preferably be academics. And in addition to the Rector, the President of the CIUP National Foundation and the General Delegate, two French personalities are appointed by the Board of Directors of the National Foundation. From now on, Portuguese and French will sit equally on the Board of Directors. Lastly, the amendment specifies that the Maison des étudiants will henceforth be known as the “résidence André de Gouveia—Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian”. Wishing to remove references to countries and give preference to names of individuals who had “honored their country and humanity”,<fnref n="76" /> Marthelot asked the foundation to propose a new name for the house. Azeredo Perdigão chose the name of André de Gouveia, a Portuguese humanist of the 16ᵉ century, who had studied at the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris under his uncle rule, whom he

<footnote n="74">⁷⁴ P. Marthelot to FCG President, July 24, 1973, AN, 20090013/1094.</footnote>

<footnote n="75">⁷⁵ FCG President to P. Marthelot, October 4, 1974, AN, 20090013/1094.</footnote>

<footnote n="76">⁷⁶ P. Marthelot to FCG President, September 10, 1974 1973, AN, 20090013/1094.</footnote>
succeeded before becoming rector of the University of Paris. This choice would undoubtedly have pleased André Honnorat, who multiplied references to the Middle Ages and placed the CIUP in the long history of a Parisian university that welcomed students and teachers from all over Europe.<fnref n="77" /> With this choice, Azeredo Perdigão also signified the end of the Portuguese Empire (the decolonizations took place in 1974–1975) and emphasized Portugal’s integration into Europe, the new horizon of Portuguese foreign policy.<fnref n="78" />

**Conflict of Interest** The author has no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this chapter.

<footnote n="77">⁷⁷ G. Tronchet, “Diplomatie universitaire...”, op. cit.</footnote>

<footnote n="78">⁷⁸ Y. Léonard, *Histoire de la nation portugaise*, Paris, Tallandier, 2022; V. Pereira, *C'est le peuple qui commande. La révolution des Éillets (1974–1976)*, Bordeaux, Éditions du Détour, 2023.</footnote>
**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

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# The Maison du Brésil During the Long’68: Between the Internationalism of University Networks and the Authoritarian Nationalism of the Military

Angélica Müller

The main objective of this chapter is to present how the events of 1968 and the occupation of the Maison du Brésil by Brazilian diplomatic agents, both civilian and military, were perceived, and to analyze the consequences of this occupation on the operation of the Maison. To do this, I will first briefly review the trajectory of the building's construction project during the 1950s, carried out at the time of the “second wave”<fnref n="1" /> of building construction in the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris (CIUP). At this stage, Brazil had a markedly developmentalist

<footnote n="1">¹ Dzovinar Kévonian, Guillaume Tronchet (dir.), *Le Campus-Monde. La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris de 1945 aux années 2000*, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2022.</footnote>
national policy, whose principles in the field of cultural diplomacy shared the importance of the CIUP's internationalist proposal. I analyze the first years of the House's operation up to the beginning of the military dictatorship in 1964, when the government began to ignore the statutes that governed it (as well as those of the CIUP) and to monitor its residents. The militaristic logic based on the doctrine of national security came to govern Brazilian policy at all levels. The result was that, coupled with the Brazilian events of 1968 and the events in France, the military government realized that maintaining the *Casa da Brasil* on French soil did more to discredit the country than actually bring any beneficial results for its image, and eventually legally disengaged itself from its links with the *Casa*.

The article is the result of extensive ongoing primary and secondary source research conducted in France and Brazil as part of the Global Youth Project<fnref n="2" /> and of the CNPq/Faperj projects.<fnref n="3" /> The documents and their respective archives will be listed as the sources are cited. Theoretically, this work is part of the tradition of studies investigating international cultural relations on the one hand, and socio-cultural history<fnref n="4" /> on the other. This socio-cultural history meets an intellectual history that is no longer conceived solely as a “history of ideas”, although it understands that the ideas that form the construction of national cultural identities are operated in a process of international circulation.<fnref n="5" /> These ideas are concretized through the constitution of networks, demonstrating the importance of understanding the actors/operators and their activities for the construction of an institutional history that is also diplomatic.

<footnote n="2">² *A Global Youth in the Making: the 200,000 Residents of the Cité internationale universitaire in 20th-Century Paris*, Project GlobalYouth, financed by the French National Research Agency, Institut d'histoire moderne et contemporaine (University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Ecole normale supérieure ENS-PSL, CNRS), lead by Guillaume Tronchet, ANR-17-CE28-0005, 2017-2022. This article is a translated and revised version of: Angélica Muller, « La Maison du Brésil pendant les “années 1968” », in Dzovinar Kévonian and Guillaume Tronchet (ed), *Le Campus-monde, op. cit.*, p. 185-198.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ La Maison du Brésil en France: espace transnational de circulation socioculturelle (1959-1979)”, under the direction of Angélica Muller.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ Robert Frank (ed.), *Pour l'histoire des relations internationales*, Paris, PUF, 2012; Christophe Charle. *Homo historicus: reflexões sobre a história, os historiadores e as ciências sociais*, Porto Alegre/Rio de Janeiro, Editora da UFRGS, Editora FGV, 2018.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ Anne-Marie Thiesse, *La création des identités nationales*, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1999.</footnote>
THE MAISON PROJECT AND ITS EARLY YEARS

As soon as the CIUP was created in the 1920s, the Brazilian govern-
ment—then renowned for its diplomatic tradition, despite a minor role in
the cultural and educational sector—was interested in the idea of building
a home for Brazilian students in Paris.<fnref n="6" /> On the one hand, the idea was
in line with fashionable modernism, where Brazil sought to reflect on
its identity, underlining its specificity within the post-war international
concertation. On the other hand, it helped to incorporate French culture
into Brazil—through long-term intellectual and cultural affinities—thus
reinforcing the initial imperial ambition of French<fnref n="7" /> academic diplomacy.
In 1926, Georges Dumas, a medical doctor and recognized conduit of
French cultural relations to Latin American countries, invited Antônio
Austragésilo, a doctor, member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters
and then federal deputy, to hold several lectures at the Sorbonne, the
Salpêtrière university hospital and to visit the CIUP. On his return to
Brazil, Austragésilo presented to the Chamber of Deputies, on July 13
of the same year, a project for the creation, in Paris, of the Maison de
l'étudiant brésilien.<fnref n="8" /> In 1928, the Brazilian ambassador, Luis Martins de
Souza Dantas, visited André Honnorat, one of the founders of the CIUP,
to ask him to reserve a plot of land for Brazil on the "hill of Montsouris".
The visit took place in the company of Paulo Carneiro, then a doctoral
student on a Brazilian state scholarship in chemistry at the Sorbonne, who
would go on to become a researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and
Brazil's permanent delegate to UNESCO. The climate of political insta-
bility, aggravated by the economic crisis caused by the crash of the New
York Stock Exchange, led to the episode known in Brazilian history as the
"Revolution of 1930". This led to the formation of a new government
and paralyzed negotiations on the construction of the House.

The idea of having a home for students in France may be welcomed
by a large part of the Brazilian elite who send their children to European
universities, as there is little university provision in the country at the time.

<footnote n="6">⁶ SALIM Inez Machado, 1959-2009: 50 anos da Casa do Brasil, 82 anos de história. Personal archive.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ TRONCHET Guillaume, *Savoirs en diplomatie. A social and transnational history of France's international university policy (1870s - 1930s)*, PhD thesis in History, University of Paris 1, 2014.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ *Le Figaro*, 12/08/1926; Diário do Congresso Nacional, 13 de julho de 1926.</footnote>
Brazil has a late university tradition, even when compared with its South American neighbors.<fnref n="9" /> The 1930s and 1940s saw the creation of the first universities in Brazil. And the French influence can be seen in the missions of teachers who played a leading role in the creation of the National Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, as well as in the constitution of the University of São Paulo. However, as historian Juliette Dumont has pointed out, exchanges between university students were not given any particular attention in Brazil.<fnref n="10" />

In the post-war period, with the aim of increasing its lost prestige, since the United States already predominated in many areas of relations with the countries of the continent, France began negotiating a cultural cooperation agreement with Brazil in 1946, which was signed in 1948.<fnref n="11" /> At the same time, in 1947, diplomatic negotiations between Brazil and France for the construction of the Brazilian building in the CIUP began.<fnref n="12" /> It was only in the 1950s, with the expansion of universities and the creation of bodies regulating higher education in the country, that the project to build a Maison du Brésil (MB) in France was revived. Thus, in 1952, the “Commission for the construction of the Brazilian Pavilion at the Cité Universitaire de Paris” was created within the Brazilian Institute of Education, Science, and Culture, an agency of

<footnote n="9">⁹ The university tradition in Spanish America is mixed, with universities opening in Peru and Mexico in the sixteenth century, and in Argentina in the early seventeenth century. The first faculty to open in Brazil, a medical school, dates back to the early nineteenth century, when the Portuguese court was transferred to the country in 1808.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ “Interest in academic exchanges and what they can contribute to Brazil’s influence was the subject of a project formulated and forwarded to the Intellectual Cooperation Division by Brazil’s Casa do Estudante (CEB) in 1941. The aim was to “offer students from Brazilian universities the opportunity to be represented abroad in a truly expressive way”, with an “adequate and rigorous individual selection process, in effect, to constitute delegations capable of cooperating extensively in the consolidation of Brazil’s relations with nations throughout the continent”. However, this project was never put into practice. in DUMONT Juliette, *De la coopération intellectuelle à la diplomatie culturelle: Les voies/x de l’Argentine, du Brésil et du Chili (1919-1946)*, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3, Thèse de doctorat, 2013, p. 636-37.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ For more information on French cultural diplomacy under the IVᵉ Republic and the various cultural cooperation agreements signed, see: Hugo Rogélio Suppo, “A “máquina diplomática cultural” da Quarta República Francesa no Brasil (1946-1958)”, *Meridiano*, vol. 17, 2016. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20889/M47c17004.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² Telegram 484, August 8, 1947. Archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Nantes).</footnote>
the Ministry of Foreign Relations, also known as Itamaraty. Chaired by Ana Amélia de Queiroz Carneiro de Mendonça,<fnref n="13" /> poet and translator, who a few years earlier had attempted to establish the first student houses outside Brazil and within the country, this commission met for three years and counted on the support of the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC).<fnref n="14" />

On June 11, 1954, Ambassador Caio de Mello Franco and Jean Sarrailh, Rector of the Paris Academy, signed the deed of gift to the University of Paris of the building to be constructed.<fnref n="15" /> Some of the conditions stipulated in the deed of gift are important for understanding the regulations that are to guide the operation of the pavilion. Registered as “Université de Paris, Maison du Brésil”, it would be administered by the University of Paris<fnref n="16" /> and managed by a 10-member board of directors, including: the Brazilian ambassador to Paris, or his delegate; the rector of the Académie de Paris, president of the CIUP; the CIUP’s general delegate; four Brazilian personalities proposed by the ambassador to the rector of the Académie de Paris; and two French personalities proposed by the CIUP board of directors to the rector of the Académie de Paris. The management of the House would remain in the hands of a director appointed by the Rector of the Paris Academy, proposed by the Board of Directors of the Maison du Brésil.<fnref n="17" />

The design for the building was sketched out by Brazilian modernist architect Lucio Costa (who, along with Oscar Niemeyer, would participate in the construction of the capital Brasilia in the following years). In July 1954, the contract between the Brazilian government and Le Corbusier's studio was signed, and in July 1955, the first stone of the house was laid, in which Paulo Carneiro deposited the deed of gift signed

<footnote n="13">13 Ana Amélia, in the 1930s-40s, was president of the Brazilian Student House.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">14 SALIM Inez Machado, *Discours 50 ans Maison du Brésil*, op. cit.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">15 *Ibid*.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">16 According to the agreement drawn up for the national foundation on July 25, 1925.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">17 Brazilian Embassy Archives, n. 606/542.93 (85).</footnote>
the previous year.<fnref n="18" /> Between the choice of land and the start of construc-
tion, 27 years passed. More than just Paulo Carneiro’s importance as a
promoter of Franco-Brazilian academic relations, the deed also shows the
profile that was desired for the house’s occupants: high-level students able
to travel around the world and representing their country. More than a
pavilion for Brazilian students, the House should be a monument repre-
senting the relationship between Brazil and France, a shared heritage, a
historical monument as qualified by the city of Paris.<fnref n="19" />

At the beginning of 1959, the administrative organization of the Maison du Brésil was set in motion: in February, Professor Péricles Madureira de Pinho—the MEC official who oversaw the construction of the pavilion—was appointed Director, and the House was inaugurated on July 18, the day after the first meeting of the Board of Directors. It was during this meeting that the House’s internal regulations were approved, which years later would be perceived by residents as “a drastic device”<fnref n="20" />: closing of the Maison at 01:30 (residents arriving after this time must present their resident card to the janitor, who will inform the director later); rooms are forbidden to be left after 9 a.m., to allow access to the cleaning staff; the elevator is blocked at 5 pm, serving only the 4ᵉ and 5ᵉ floors reserved for women (men and couples living on the lower floors must use the stairs); it is forbidden to put up posters on the building’s walls without the director’s permission; and, among other rules, visits to the building lobby are restricted to 11 pm. In its early years, the Maison played an important role in representing Brazil in Paris: “the Maison lived its first years with all the splendor it could enjoy: all the national authorities and artists passing through Paris visited it, and it was thus that the Maison received President Juscelino Kubitschek in person, and presented concerts by Vinicius de Moraes”.<fnref n="21" />

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ SALIM Inez Machado, *Discours 50 ans Maison du Brésil, op. cit.* In a separate article, I explore in greater depth the trajectory of the Maison’s construction, showing the work of the Capes, the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Service and Itamaraty, and highlighting the intermediation between Lucio Costa’s initial project and the one built by Corbusier. Angélica Müller, “The Maison du Brésil at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris: a project towards national development and internationalism”, *Espacio, tiempo y educación* (forthcoming), 2023.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ Recognized in 1985. https://www.ciup.fr/presentation-de-la-maison-du-bresil/</footnote>

<footnote n="20">20 Brazilian Embassy Archives, n. 606/542.93 (85).</footnote>

<footnote n="21">21 SALIM Inez Machado, *Discours 50 ans Maison du Brésil*, op. cit.</footnote>
Internally, a number of problems arose, starting with the building itself, whose fittings and furnishings had not been completed by the time of opening. The planned budget was insufficient, leading to problems with payments, which also arose from the MEC's difficulty in transmitting the expected amounts. At the Board of Directors' meeting of February 2, 1960,<fnref n="22" /> the first meeting since the building's inauguration, Director Célia Neves Lazzarotto reported on the disciplinary problems encountered with the residents, which she attributed to their “heterogeneity”. As a result, it was proposed that from now on, the Maison should only receive students who had already completed an undergraduate degree (with an exception for doctors and artists whose work is recognized) “whose maturity would facilitate the maintenance of discipline”. Most councillors found the proposal radical and chose to approve a new rule for resident admission: all must now hold a higher education degree and submit a concrete study plan. The Board also questioned the House Director's ability to select applications that had not been recommended, and as such, all applications from Brazilian candidates had to be initially approved by the Coordenação de aperfeiçoamento de pessoal de nível superior (Higher Education Staff Development Coordination or CAPES). Only after the files had been analyzed would the Director make decisions based on the CIUP's criteria, and pass them on to the Maison's Board of Directors for review if necessary.

After four successive directors in its first four years,<fnref n="23" /> Luis Lisanti Filho, Professor of History at the University of São Paulo, who had been a pupil of Fernand Braudel and held a teaching post at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (VIᵉ section), was appointed in July 1963. The decision to appoint Lisanti pleased the great French historian: “This appointment will thus create one more link between the École and Brazilian academics, at a time when, moreover, we are ready to make a considerable effort towards rapprochement and collaboration with the whole of South America”.<fnref n="24" /> It seems that the CIUP is seen as an important part of the VIᵉ section's approach and collaboration with the academic world in South

<footnote n="22">²² Archives of the Brazilian Embassy, Minutes of the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Maison du Brésil de la Cité universitaire de Paris, February 2, 1960.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ They are Péricles Madureira de Pinho, Célia Neves Lazarotto, Leônidas Sobrinho Porto and Américo Jacobina Lacombe.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">²⁴ Archives F. Braudel, Correspondance Braudel MS 8510 (72), Dossier Lisanti Filho Luis. Letter 26, July 15, 1963, from Fernand Braudel to M. Almir de Castro.</footnote>