French Anti-Americanism

In American Enemy: The History of French Anti-Americanism, reknowned French professor of history Philippe Roger traces the largely unexplored origins of French anti-Americanism over the longue durée in an effort to debunk claims that the phenomenon is “a recent fever we [can] use polls to chart” [1]. Arguing that the very term “Americanism” was historically ambiguous and ill-defined in its native United States, Roger skillfully shows the ways in the French intellectual community defined the term according to how they felt Americans defined themselves. This projection of meanings was often plagued by hypocrisy, generalization, and intellectual and cultural arrogance on the part of the French, and Roger’s personal opposition to French anti-Americanism is thinly veiled throughout the book.

Anti-American Discourse Evolves

By framing his inquiry over centuries, Roger avoids the narrow scope of many historians interested in French anti-Americanism. Claiming that the existing literature on the subject has too often sought answers to France’s enduring negative opinions of America in purely contemporary contexts, Roger believes that the origins of this phenomenon lie in centuries-old discourses beginning in the eighteenth century. Opening with an exhaustive survey of eighteenth century French intellectuals, artists, naturalists, and authors, Roger reveals the inherent bias in early modern discourse.

Europe's Views of the New World

For prominent French and Dutch naturalists, America was characterized as a land of “unspeakable desolation: miry waters, sterile land, [and] congeries of leaves that have been rotting since the flood” [2]. Genetically inferior plants, animals and peoples were all found in the America of French intellectuals. Also, the American climate and landscape was said to enervate the continent’s early settlers, resulting in a population characterized as culturally deficient, lazy, and uninspiring by European standards. For Roger, this intellectual foundation would shape the centuries of French anti-Americanism, adapting to fit particular political and cultural circumstances throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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