A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #359 - History - Mars Imperium/Imperial Marseille: A resource portal on (post-)colonial history (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The traces of colonial history are numerous in Marseille. This 
multifaceted heritage, regularly questioned, bears witness to an 
important chapter in the city's history, knowledge of which remains 
fragmented and biased by a number of preconceived ideas or 
misconceptions. It does not allow us to properly assess its impact on 
Marseille society in the 19th and 20th centuries, nor to fully 
understand the issues, questions, tensions, and demands currently being 
expressed, for example, around the statues depicting near-naked women of 
color-conceived as "allegories" of the colonies-at the foot of the 
stairs of Saint-Charles train station, or the street names glorifying 
the torturers of colonization.

A social demand, a deficit, and a need for history: these were the 
starting points of the Mars Imperium project[1], the open-access online 
portal on the imperial and (post-)colonial history of Marseille, which 
launched on March 11, 2025.

To explore this history and help people understand and share it, the 
research team behind the project chose not to write a book or organize a 
conference, but to bring together several partners[2]to produce a web 
portal bringing together five online platforms, each addressing the 
(post-)colonial history of Marseille and its many traces from a 
particular perspective. A web documentary brings together over 80 
five-minute video clips, each focusing on one aspect of this history or 
its current repercussions.

It also includes a video clip on the assassination of Ibrahim Ali in 
1995[3]. A documentary film, Focus 1922, revisits the 1922 Colonial 
Exhibition in Marseille through the eyes of its protagonists-organizers, 
artisans, and people displaced from colonized territories to embody the 
fantasized colonies, the Marseille public. "Vitrines d'empire" attempts 
to reconstruct the history of some forty objects museumized by the 
Colonial Museum of Marseille, drawing on the often silent archives of 
the museums that now house these objects. The "digital walks" offer 
three thematic itineraries through the city to delve into the history of 
the urban traces left by colonization in heritage, the arts, 
architecture, and toponymy.

The media library documents nearly 1,500 archives and resources on the 
colonial history of Marseille, brought together virtually in one place 
to discover or delve deeper into the history of the Phocaean city and, 
beyond, contemporary France.

The portal also offers signposted tours within all the content on these 
platforms, organized according to cross-cutting themes: the role of 
science in the service of imperialism, the question of colonial heritage 
in cities, the place of women and gender, the uses of labor in an 
imperial context, racism and anti-racism, and anti-colonial movements. 
This project brought together some sixty people over three years: 
researchers, digital humanities professionals, members of partner 
cultural institutions, community leaders, activists, students, web 
developers, graphic designers, and filmmakers.

Open to new contributions and designed so that these historical 
materials can be reappropriated by all, Mars Imperium aims to continue 
to evolve and provide insights into other cities with colonial histories.

Delphine Cavallo, Web and Data Coordination for Mars Imperium, TELEMMe 
Laboratory (AMU, CNRS)

Validate

[1]Mars Imperium/Imperial Marseille, "a portal that takes stock of the 
state of knowledge and debates on the colonial and post-colonial history 
of Marseille."

[2]The "Imperial Marseille: History and (Post)Colonial Memories 
19th-21st Century" project, which initiated the Mars Imperium portal, 
brings together five research laboratories, museums, archives, 
libraries, and the Ancrages association.

[3]Yvan Gastaut and Agnès Maury, "The Assassination of Ibrahim Ali or 
the Awareness of the Comorian Presence in Marseille (1995)," Mars 
Imperium. On the assassination of Ibrahim Ali, see also the article 
"Ibrahim Ali, Latest Victim of a Series of Racist Crimes" in this issue.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Mars-Imperium-Marseille-imperiale-Un-portail-de-ressources-sur-l-histoire-post
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