Why do the French Hate Us? Part 1
The recent barrage of insults from across the Channel reflect some very old stories
This will be the first of four articles exploring different aspects of the French attitude to the British (normally referred to as ‘les anglais’, the English, in France). Parts I and II will be public posts sent to free subscribers and available to all. Parts III and IV will be for paid subscribers only.
The four parts will be as follows:
Reprising the old stories and insults (this one) – Public post
EITHER The French superiority complex: of style and reason OR Brexit: why it matters so much to the French – Public post
EITHER The French superiority complex: of style and reason OR Brexit: why it matters so much to the French – Paid subscribers only
How should Brits respond? – Paid subscribers subs only
England is the declared enemy of your power and your State: she always will be. Her commercial greed, her haughty tone in negotiations, her jealousy of your power . . . must make you foresee that it will take centuries to make lasting peace with this State, which aims at supremacy in the four corners of the earth . . . We must employ the genius and all the power of the nation against the English.
~ The Duc de Choiseul, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1758-1770.
Robert and Isabelle Tombs’ book That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present (William Heinemann, 2006) is littered with quotations like this, showing French government, state and elite folk unloading a pretty constant and consistent flow of verbal manure onto their neighbours over the Channel.
Many of these accusations are strikingly familiar from contemporary French rhetoric towards the British in disputes over fish, Channel migrants, the Northern Ireland Protocol and indeed the whole Brexit process. French President Emmanuel Macron, his ministers and the wider political-media Establishment in France have engaged in a remarkable, seemingly continuous campaign of aggressive, strident assertion, making repeated negative judgements about the British government and politics. These focus on individual character (especially that of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister), apparent injustices, weakness (versus the EU) and the inevitability of British failure because of Brexit, including the ultimate destruction of the United Kingdom as we know it.
French attacks
In historical terms, the style of these attacks is nothing particularly new, going way back in French history. In their terrific book, Robert and Isabelle Tombs talk about how, under ‘the Sun King’ Louis XIV,
“In petty matters the French aimed not merely to dominate but to humiliate. . . . The French government behaved as a law unto itself, using (as a modern French specialist puts it) ‘sometimes threats to intimidate a neighbour, sometimes violence to impose French will’.”
This style continued after the Revolution under Napoleon, who tended to do diplomacy by dictating terms and invading if he got the wrong answer. British Prime Minister William Pitt (the Younger) said during the one year’s peace of the Napoleonic Wars that, “we must soon accept avowedly to receive the law from him, or to encounter war.”
Seriousness versus chaos
In the current disputes, the French Government has repeatedly denounced its British counterparts for their lack of seriousness, while boasting of their own. Just recently, we have heard the accusation made in relation to the Channel migration trade, with President Macron calling the release of proposed British solutions by Boris Johnson ‘not serious’ and cancelling the invitation of British Home Secretary to a meeting on the issue in Calais. On 29th November, France's Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said that France was ready to begin discussions on the issue if the British entered talks in a “serious spirit”.
The other day Macron said the Northern Ireland Protocol is of existential importance for Europe on account of the Single Market and, raising the stakes significantly, a matter of “war and peace” for Ireland. He had the nerve to add, after this frankly reckless assertion, that “We should avoid any temptation to be anything less than serious.”
Macron has also been notably reckless on Covid, pointedly targeting the AstraZeneca vaccine developed at Oxford University, saying that “everything points to thinking it is quasi-ineffective on people older than 65, some say those 60 years or older” (precisely the age-group most vulnerable to Covid-19). He said that the British government was “not very serious” in its Covid strategy of maximising first doses, while his Europe minister Clément Beaune said the UK was taking unnecessary ‘extra risks’. They also threatened to block vaccine exports to force Britain’s hand.
To add more insult to insult, it has just emerged that Macron told French journalists that Boris Johnson was a ‘clown’, a ‘knucklehead’ and ‘good-for-nothing’, and Britain a ‘circus’.
These accusations may match Boris and us Brits rather well in some respects, but they also fit a French stereotype of the English going back centuries. In a popular account of English life in 1745, the Abbé Jean-Bernard Le Blanc wrote, “Reasonable people are enemies of eccentricity – a fault as rare in France as it is common in England.” And “Humour [is] a ridiculous extravagance of conversation . . . joking combined with eccentricity.” He could almost have been writing about Boris.
Tone
These attacks merge into more general complaints about how the British conduct themselves in negotiations and politics more generally: as matters of tone, style and etiquette whereby anything that doesn’t suit the French agenda is presented as unacceptable etiquette. Home Secretary Priti Patel was disinvited from the meeting in Calais because Boris Johnson had sent a letter (mild and restrained in tone) about the Channel migrant deaths which the French deemed ‘unacceptable’. As The Atlantic columnist Tom McTague tweeted, “French ministers make ad hominem attacks on UK counterparts—accurate or not—then officially tweet them out, but the publication of a letter crosses a line?”
To many of us, it all seems like a comical waste of time and effort. However the French media appears to be largely onside, alongside the large anti-Brexit and anti-Tory component of British media. Economist journalist Sophie Pedder got more than 13,000 likes and retweets for calling the letter ‘Breathtaking’, suggesting it couldn’t have been better designed to irritate ‘France’ (not Macron, who she has written a glowing biography of).
It all rather recalls French Minister of Foreign Affairs Choiseul’s complaint about England’s ‘haughty tone in negotiations’ to justify another war as the two countries worked their way through a succession of six of them spanning during the late 17th to early 19th Centuries.
Perfidious Boris
Speaking of that crucial 18th Century period of repeated conflict, the two Tombs write, “In France, the rising theme of anglophoba was not Protestantism but commercialism. Britain was denounced as ‘Carthage’ – materialistic, insatiable and duplicitous.” We could see this narrative at play recently in Clément Beaune denouncing UK employers for practising “quasi-modern slavery”, allowing him to explain the recent deaths as “first and foremost an English issue”.
A few days before the French disinvited Priti Patel, the official French Diplomacy Twitter account rather undiplomatically quoted Foreign Minster Yves Le Drian calling Boris Johnson a “populist who uses all elements at his disposal to blame others for problems he faces internally.”
Macron and other French ministers like finance minister Bruno Le Maire have repeatedly denounced Boris and other pro-Brexit politicians as ‘liars’ who tricked people into voting for Brexit. Many have piled on behind them, bringing up the old accusation of ‘Perfidious Albion’ to attack not just the Government but the country and its people, deemed to be narrow-minded and xenophobic in voting for Brexit.
Historical resentments
Sylvie Perez, a French journalist based in London, says, “The French often criticize the English for not keeping their word, like with Napoleon’s exile to Saint Helena. But also the Dunkirk evacuation in the Second World War, with French soldiers left behind [40,000 stayed to hold back the Germans, although 125,000 French and other Allied got away alongside the British]. There was a fantastic French movie called Week-end à Zuydcoote adapted from Robert Merle’s novel, starring some of the great French actors of the 1960s, like Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Pierre Marielle and François Périer.”
Understandably, the British evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940 appeared as a betrayal to the French High Command and the French people. However, to the British, it was about saving their army from a battle that had already been lost (primarily by the French) and saving their own country from Nazi occupation – something for which it has embedded itself in British memory. I think any sort of objective history should recognise that this was the best choice, at least for British interests – and even for the French in time, since it meant that Britain could serve as the springboard to liberate France and the rest of Western Europe four years later.
A similar argument can be made for the horrific tragedy of Mers El Kébir, just a month after Dunkirk, in which a British naval squadron bombarded a French fleet in harbour near the Algerian city of Oran, killing 1,250 sailors. For the French, this was an outrage and remains so. However for the British, it was a necessary evil to stop the powerful French ships falling into German hands and putting their essential communications to North America and the rest of the world in even more jeopardy. It showed that Britain may be on the brink of defeat, but it was serious about fighting the war and would not cede any advantage to the enemy – something that apparently impressed the Americans.
I know that if I was French thinking these things, let alone saying them, would be difficult if not impossible. Our different perspectives are primary to how we see things and deserve respect. Many of the events which helped form French negative opinions of the English – notably during the various conflicts in North America – barely feature in British histories and are virtually unknown to us here. However history in France appears to be much more politically loaded, in rejecting narratives which don’t reflect well on Napoleon for example: defending French pride and diverting blame for their actions onto others, just as Napoleon did while killing and looting his way across Europe. There is a tendency to see the French interest as a universal interest, which would mean that any alternative interpretations other than pro-French ones are illegitimate.
The Idea of France
To me, it seems that a lot of this assertion and denunciation arises from a metaphysical place: from an idea of France that transcends the difficulties of politics, the contingencies of reality and the reality of history. This France is pure. It is an ideal of rationality, justice, civilisation and progress; of unassailable power and unshakable pride. It is always right and just, is never defeated, never broken and never wrong.
I think it is this France – and the French elites’ partially successful attempt to extend it to the European Union – that Macron and his puffed-up ministers are speaking on behalf of and making their insults from.
Without this metaphysical Idea of France, I think the current bullying French (and sometimes the EU) stance would be inconceivable and impossible. It seems to act like a rallying call: signalling to the faithful that it is time to mobilise, stand up and defend the country: even if the actual cause is a handful of fishermen, someone sending a letter and a Northern Ireland Protocol that has no impact on France, concerns a place the French don’t care about and appear to know nothing of. It’s a way for French elites to come together, show how tough they are - and thereby mobilise the country to vote for Macron in the forthcoming election.
There are other dynamics, from intellectual snobbery to religious feeling. As Sylvie Perez puts it, “When I left France to live in the UK, I noticed among French intellectuals a genuine hate for the British. It was rooted in Gaullism, Catholicism and anti-capitalism. Many of these intellectuals love British Catholic writers, G.K. Chesterton especially; in fact a book just came out entitled, Dictionnaire des auteurs catholiques des îles britanniques. So, you see, the segregation between Catholics and the others goes on.”
Not all hate
“But,” as the two Tombs write,
“there is a counterbalancing Franco-British story, which is not about conflict, but about mutual fascination, amusement, admiration, exchange and imitation. . . More British have always come to France to admire, experience, and enjoy. The French have been happy to accept this tribute without reciprocating it. Rather, they have learned and imported things from Britain, and travel there has generally been for practical and limited purposes – often to earn money. Counter-intuitively, the prevailing cultural current has been from north to south – at least in the sense that novelty came from England, even if it was transformed (like cycle-racing, rugby, beefsteak, Monet’s fogs or Coco Chanel’s suits) into things quintessentially French. The consequence is that few countries have such intermingled cultures. Amusingly, they like to think of each as opposites.”
Perez says,
“I live in South Kensington. which has been a refuge for the French Huguenots and later for those fleeing the French Revolution. Victor Hugo chose Guernsey for his exile. There is also Auguste Rodin’s gift to the V&A museum in November 1914: a magnificent collection of sculptures to honour the French and British soldiers fighting on the same side in the First World War. In theatre, everything English is considered valuable in France. Any British playwright’s work will be welcomed by producers, from Harold Pinter to Alan Ayckbourn.”
As far as I see it, you can only hate someone who matters to you, someone with whom you have a close relationship. For centuries, England and Britain have offered alternative models to the French, just as they have for us. We have also hosted each others’ exiles, rebels and reprobates over the centuries.
It means the English/British have a recurring place in French internal politics: offering novelty and difference. This can sometimes appear as an existential threat to established power and to established customs. A reliable way for elites to defend themselves is to turn the source into an adversary and enemy that patriots must mobilise against. It’s a narrative which recurs not just in French history but perhaps, in its various forms, in all history everywhere. I also think the fact that we don’t generally pay much attention to the French is important: it adds another little level of resentment that can be added to other historical grievances.
Writing of the 18th Century, the two Tombs say, “If one could sum up a vast range of language and imagery, it would be that the British either admired or laughed at the French, and the French either envied or sneered at the British.”
There is an imbalance of admiration here, certainly. I think this reflects the way the French – and especially the powerful elites who pronounce to the population – feel that their historical destiny as the leaders of global civilisation has been denied them – and how the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ are largely responsible.
In the next two Parts, we will take a closer look at how this has worked itself out – and how these pro-EU elites have spotted an opportunity in Brexit for a bit of revenge.
Postscript: there are three further parts to this series, as follows: