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Francophobia is a consistent hostility toward the government, culture, history, or people of France or the Francophonie. Contemporary prejudice against the French often derives from criticisms from the immediate post-World War II period and the way of life of the artistic and philosophic elite of the time. Although those prejudices are particularly widespread in the United States today, Francophobia has existed in various forms and in different countries for centuries.

Use of the Term

Given its lengthy history and various changes in relative international status, properly qualifying hostility toward France and its people with one term is difficult. Francophobia is used here as it is the historically understood term for the most pronounced and longest running hostility toward things French – that of the United Kingdom from the 17th to 19th centuries. Francophobe and Francophile (along with the now archaic, Gallophobe and Gallophile) would have been well understood to British commentators of the period and the former terms are still easily grasped today. In the contemporary United States, anti-French sentiment is more likely to be used to describe the recent upsurge in that country of animosity toward the French. In former French colonies, meanwhile, resentment may fall under the larger rubric of anti-colonialism.

France as Continental Hegemon

Though French history in the broadest sense extends back more than a millennium it has existed as a recognizable nation-state (rather than a dynastic, transnational entity typical of the late Middle Ages) for less than half that period. According to Eric Hobsbawm (1990), only aristocrats and scholars spoke French before the French Revolution, whilst the vast majority of the population of the French kingdom spoke a variety of dialects. Henceforth, Hobsbawm argues that the French nation-state was constituted during the 19th century, through conscription which accounted for interactions between French citizens coming from various regions, and the Third Republic's public instruction laws, enacted in the 1880s. However, francophobia as a consistent, identifiable phenomenon may be dated to the point at which the country became the chief power of continental Europe: after breaking the back of the Habsburg Empire, together with it's allies, in the Thirty Years' War, ended by the 1648 Peace of Westphalia.

1648 and Louis XIV

  • France was perceived as having betrayed Christian unity by allying itself with the Ottoman Turks during the conflict with the Habsburgs.
  • The interventions of Louis XIV in Italy, the United Provinces and German principalities effectively united the entire continent against the French.

Francophobia in Britain

As Britain effectively leveraged itself into the position of dominant mercantile and seafaring power, hostility toward and strategic conflict with France became inevitable. The era of Louis XIV through Napoleon's final capitulation in 1815 was, in essence, a prolonged Franco-British conflict to determine who would be the dominant European power; virtually every large conflict of the period pitted a British-led alliance versus a French-led counterpart.

The dimensions of this conflict in Britain were as much cultural as strategic. Indeed, British nationalism in its nascent phases was in large part a contra-France phenomenon and the attitudes involved extended well beyond who won what on various battlefields:

  • A growing group of British nationalists in the 17th and 18th centuries resented the veneration that was often accorded French culture and the French language; the French were broadly seen as effeminate.
  • France was the strongest Catholic power and "anti-Papist" suspicions were always strong in Britain.
  • The French political system appeared absolutist and conformist, contrasting Anglo-Saxon notions of liberty and individualism which British nationalists (often hypocritically) invoked.
  • The permeation of anti-French sentiment throughout society - as epitomised by the apocryphal story of the Hartlepool monkey hangers, whose belief that the French were literally inhuman, led them to allegedly executed a pet monkey in the belief that it was an invading Frenchman.

In Britain, Francophobic sentiments continued until the Entente Cordiale.

The French Revolution

The revolutionary ideas that emerged in France in 1789 and subsequent years were not well-received by monarchists and aristocrats on the rest of the continent and in Britain. France, the leading European power for two centuries, had suddenly and violently overthrown the feudal foundations of continental order and, it was feared, the revolution might spread. Objections were many:
  • That the legitimacy of hereditary monarchy had been vitiated.
  • That violent, uneducated peasants and urban poor had gained power over their traditional social masters.
  • That the revolution was anti-religious.
These concerns were not unique to Europe. Despite the positive view some Americans had of The French Revolution it awakened or created anti-French feelings among many Federalists.

The Age of Napoleon

Napoleon's conquests and the subsequent occupations led many Europeans to resent the French. Beyond the obvious dislike of occupation, resentment also stemmed from the fact that the armies of Napoleon carried the ideas and reforms of the French Revolution through the Code Napoléon. Britain, being one of the few nations able to stand up to Napoleon, were at almost constant war with France leading to a rise on Francophobia.

Goya painted several famous pictures depicting the violence of the Peninsula wars.

Napoleon also tried to recolonialize Haiti and re-enslave the Haitians — a policy which led to a long bitter bloody struggle there, ending in ultimate failure for the French. However, in 1825, France imposed a huge reparations fine of 150 million gold francs on Haiti, to compensate former French slaveowners for their losses (60 million of this was eventually paid by 1883).

France as Imperial Power

France's colonial empire earned it many enemies, among rival colonial countries, especially Great Britain, and especially amongst colonized people.

France in Africa and Asia

Asia
Throughout the colonization of French Indochina, many groups actively planned terrorist actions against French people living in the area. The French colonists were given the special epithet thực dân (originally meaning colonist, but evolving to refer to the oppressive regime of the French) in Vietnamese; it is still universally used in discussions about the colonial era. After the French were defeated in Vietnam, those who collaborated with them (called tay sai – agents) were vilified. Those who left for France with the French were known as Việt gian (Viet traitors) and had all their property confiscated. Although anti-French feelings in Vietnam have abated, the use of words like thực dân to describe the French is still normal.

The support of France to African dictatorships

France played a questionable role in many of its former African colonies. A pun developed to describe the relationship—"Françafrique" (fr:Françafrique), which can be read either as "France-Africa" or "Money France" ("France à fric").

Historically, France is accused of complicity in the installation of dictatorships, directly (supplies of materiel, mercenaries, soldiers) or indirectly (silence as assent). This includes the validation or support of faked elections (Chad, Togo).

Anti-French sentiment continues (insert reference) based on perceived economic exploitation and the maintenance of client relationships which have often encouraged political and military destabilization (for instance Elf Aquitaine in Congo and Angola, Bolloré in Côte d'Ivoire). France has also sheltered exiled former dictators.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the authoritarian leaders France is accused (insert reference)of having helped:

The Case of Algeria

The French actions in the Algerian War of Independence inspired condemnation and horror by many around the world. France appeared unwilling or unable to admit that its Empire was untenable, archaic and rooted on blind force. Atrocities in Algeria contributed to anti-French sentiments in the Islamic world well into the 1990s. The 1995 bombings in France were an attempt by the terrorist group GIA to prevent France from helping the Algerian government to fight it.

In the Suez Crisis of 1956 the French also angered many, as it was seen as an excuse to make an opportunistic grab of a financial resource of a poor nation.

France as vocal Middle Power

World War II

The behaviour of the French before and during World War II is contested on several points.
  • The French government (like the British) actively pursued the policy of appeasement and accepted Hitler's various violations of the Versailles treaty and his demands at Munich in 1938. The misguided policy of appeasement – which was wildly popular in much of Western Europe – should be understood however in the context of the massive losses of World War I, fought in large part on French soil and leading to approximately 1.4 million French dead including civilians (see World War I casualties), and four times as many casualties.
  • The French army resisted for only about six weeks after the Germans invaded in May 1940. This has been variously interpreted by critics as overconfidence in the Maginot Line and deficiencies in the French military, or as defeatism on the part of the French government. Curiously however, similar criticisms are rarely levelled against the Poles, the Dutch or the Belgians, nor for that matter against the British forces who were on the Western Front with the French in 1939-40 and whose route and flight to Dunkirk was part of the defeat. Modern military historians admit French failures, but against the might of the German Blitzkrieg, the charge of cowardice is belied by the savage fighting of the French and the 130,000 French dead in the first six weeks of the war (twice the number of American losses at Normandy in 1944).
  • The Vichy government had an overt policy of collaborating with the Nazis in order to suffer less repression, which included the payment of a massive war tribute and the sending of hundreds of thousands of French citizens into forced labor for the German military machine. The Vichy government also aided the deportation of -mainly foreign- Jews at the request of the German occupiers, as part of a -not entirely successful- trade-off to protect Jews of french nationality.
  • Many French people collaborated with the German invader throughout the occupation (although many French also became members of the French Resistance and the Free French Forces under Charles de Gaulle). It can be noted, though, that similar collaboration occurred in the other countries of occupied Western Europe, including the Channel Islands (British dependencies).

For these reasons, when the war ended, the United States, USSR and Great Britain conceived of France as one of the defeated powers and Charles de Gaulle was not invited to Yalta or Potsdam. Yet the Grand Alliance allowed France a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council and a share in the occupation of Berlin.

Gaullism

Starting with Charles de Gaulle's insistence that France should be part of the peace negotiations at the end of World War II and not be occupied by the Americans, and throughout the time he spent at the head of the country, de Gaulle lent France what some thought was more importance than it deserved. He promoted national independence, with, as some practical consequences, some reluctance for international organizations such as NATO or the European Economic Community (EEC). The basic tenets were that France should not have to rely on any foreign country for its survival (thus the creation of the French nuclear deterrent) and that France should refuse subservience to any foreign power, be it the United States or the Soviet Union. He also put a lot of pressure on the European institutions for France to remain a major power in the Union. He also twice blocked British entry into the EEC, citing Britain's "special relationship" with the United States.

De Gaulle is often cited with leading what is sometimes perceived as the overestimation of France's importance in its liberation from the Germans.

Anti-French sentiment in Australasia and the Pacific

France has remained a colonial power in Pacific, well after other European countries divested their imperial legacies. France controls the relatively small and isolated colonies of New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna Islands and French Polynesia. There have been sporadic anti-French demonstrations in French Polynesia, and briefly in the 1980s a pro-independence insurgency in New Caledonia, led by the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak Socialiste.

More politically volatile has been the issue of nuclear testing in the Pacific. Since 1960 around 200 nuclear tests have occurred around the Pacific, to the opprobrium of other Pacific states, Australia and New Zealand. Anti-French sentiment has not been cooled by a series of scandals involving French security forces seeking to foil the activity of protestors. In 1972 the Greenpeace vessel Vega was rammed at Moruroa. The following year Greenpeace protestors were detained by the French, and the skipper of the Vega was severely beaten. In response there were anti-French demonstrations in Australia and New Zealand, with the ACTU leader Bob Hawke making the passing observation: The French are bastards.

Protests rose again in 1985 after the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland. Australia ceased military cooperation with France and embargoed the export of uranium to France, while the public in the region boycotted French goods.

The end of the Cold War led to a French moratorium on nuclear testing, but it was lifted in 1995 by Jaques Chirac. After a Greenpeace vessel was boarded by the French navy personnel with tear gas, anti-French sentiments were reignited in Australia. Protestors besieged the French embassy in Canberra, while the French honorary Consulate in Perth was fire-bombed. Mayors tore up sister city relationships with their French partners. Delifrance was forced to downplay its entry into the Australian market. The Herald Sun ran an article entitled 'Why the French are Bastards'. A group of Australians chose a more direct and reasoned means of protest by running a full page advertisement in Le Monde, reminding the French public of both the strength of hostility in Australia of the nuclear testing, and the large numbers of ANZAC soldiers who fell in France's defence in the First World War. Nevertheless France detonated six nuclear bombs in 1995 and 1996.

The French press returned the score by discussing Australia's own human rights record, and it's supposed ambitions to dominate the Pacific (one cartoon by Plantu portrayed an Australian wearing a very British bowler hat). Others wondered why Australians were not as energetic about Chinese nuclear tests at Lop Nor.

Anti-French sentiment in the United States

Main article: Anti-French sentiment in the United States

The opposition of France to the Iraq War triggered a significant anti-French movement in the United States, of which the renaming of french fries to freedom fries became an internationally known expression.

The swell of anti-French sentiment in the United States during the first years of the 21st century was marked but did have historical roots in longstanding American resentment toward France. What is unique in this recent case is the degree to which many conservative media personalities and politicians have made deliberate efforts to exacerbate it.

See also

External links

Anti-national sentiment | Foreign relations of France | Phobias | Racism

Francophobie | Francofobia | 恐法症

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Francophobia".

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