Thomas-Alexandre Dumas - Legacy and Honors

Legacy and Honors

• Dumas' name is inscribed on the south wall of the Arc de Triomphe .

• In 1913, a statue of General Dumas was erected in Place Malesherbes (now Place du Général Catroux) in Paris in Autumn 1912 after a long fundraising campaign spearheaded by Anatole France and Sarah Bernhardt. From the moment of its installation until some time after July 1913 the statue was covered by a shroud due to the difficulty of the numerous governmental agencies involved to reach agreement on the modalities of its official inauguration. It stood in Place Malesherbes for thirty years, alongside statues of Alexandre Dumas's descendants Alexandre Dumas, père (erected in 1883) and Alexandre Dumas, fils (erected in 1906), as well as one of Sarah Bernhardt. The Germans destroyed it in the winter of 1941-1942, and it has never been restored.

• In 2009, a sculpture in his honor, made by Driss Sans-Arcidet, was erected in Paris, Place du Général Catroux (formerly Place Malesherbes). Representing broken slave shackles, it was unveiled on 4 April 2009. The critic Jean-Joël Brégeon has claimed that the symbolism of the statue was not appropriate because, apart from his noble upbringing, the general had never been a slave. Documents cited above, however, show that his father sold and then re-purchased Alexandre Dumas, disproving this claim. Dumas biographer Tom Reiss has suggested that the monument is inappropriate for other reasons: "In the race politics of twenty-first-century France, the statue of General Dumas had morphed into a symbolic monument to all the victims of French colonial slavery.... There is still no monument in France commemorating the life of General Alexandre Dumas."

• In April 2009, the writer Claude Ribbe started an internet petition, asking French President Nicolas Sarkozy to award General Dumas the Légion d'honneur. As of October 2012, the petition has gathered over 6400 signatories.