Sources
Help build the largest human-edited directory on the web.
Submit a site - Become an editor
Wikipedia. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Are you an expert in this subject? Join the discussion and share your knowledge at Wikipedia.org.
Francophobia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article has multiple issues:
Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page. |
Francophobia is a consistent hostility toward the government, culture, history, or people of France or the Francophonie. Its antonym is francophilia. 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[citation needed], Francophobia has existed in various forms and in different countries for centuries. In China, the term "Francophobia" (恐法症) was introduced in summer 2006 in the context of the eight-year standing soccer rivalry between Brazil and France by local media under its literal meaning of "Fear of the French" (phobos is the Greek word for "fear"). Some people may consider the term "Francophobia" a misnomer as "phobia" comes from the Latin for "fear" while the term is used to refer to what would properly be called misogallism (from the Greek "miso-" meaning hatred, and the Greek "gallic", rather than the Latin "franc" which would mean mixing Latin and Greek).
Contents |
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.
Though French history in the broadest sense extends back more than a millennium, its political unity dates back from the reign of Louis XI, who set up the basis of nation-state (rather than a dynastic, transnational entity typical of the late Middle Ages). According to Eric Hobsbawm (1990)[citation needed], only aristocrats and scholars spoke French before the French Revolution, whilst about two-thirds 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, probably in parallel with the birth of the European nationalisms.
England and France have a long history of conflict, dating from disputes over English fiefs in France and the Hundred Years War. There has also been an element of class conflict in these attitudes, as after Hastings and the colonization by William the Conqueror, the aristocracy that ruled England was French-speaking and of French origin, while the majority of England's population was Anglo-Saxon. The antagonism was so deep that it contributed to the rivalry between Richard I of England and Philip II of France over leadership of the Third Crusade.[citation needed]
The modern history of conflict between the two nations stems from the rise of Britain effect into a position as a dominant mercantile and seafaring power from the late 17th century onward. Hostility toward and strategic conflict with France's similar ambitions became a defining characteristic of relations between the two powers. The time between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and 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. English hostility to the Catholic Church, which dated back to earlier conflicts with Spain and the Catholic Hapsburg dynasty contributed to attitudes towards the French, because France was also seen as a Catholic power, while the majority of the English people were Protestants belonging to the Church of England. Britain assisted continental European states in resisting French ambitions to hegemony during the reign of Louis XIV and of course during the Napoleonic Wars. Britain also resented France's intervention in the American Revolutionary War. These repeated conflicts spawned deep mutual antagonism between the two nations, which were only, and partially, overcome by their alliance to contain Imperial Germany in the early 20th century.
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.
- France was the strongest Catholic power and "anti-Papist" suspicions were always strong in Britain.
- The French political system appered absolutist and conformist, contrasting Anglo-Saxon notions of liberty and individualism which British nationalists invoked[citation needed].
- 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 have allegedly executed a pet monkey in the belief that it was an invading Frenchman (although the story is based upon the disputed premise that those involved had never seen a monkey before)[citation needed].
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.
- That the revolution aspired to continental hegemony, in effect that lierte, egalite, fraternite would be limited to the French, while the Spanish, Italians, etc would be under French domination. Thus the nationalism created in France during the revolution spread to other nations under French occupation, leading to resistance movements and guerillas opposed to the French.
- That the revolution would (and eventually did) result in a reign of terror terminating in despotism (under Napoleon), thus failing to live up to aspirations of liberty ('Reflections on the Revolution in France').
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[citation needed].
 |
Please help improve this article by expanding this section. See talk page for details. Please remove this message once the section has been expanded. |
Goya painted several famous pictures depicting the violence of the Peninsula wars.
France's colonial empire earned it many enemies, among rival colonial countries, especially Great Britain, and especially amongst colonized people. On a whole, although French neo-colonialism is denounced under the term of Françafrique (including by sectors of the French population itself)[citation needed], this does not necessarily lead to "Francophobia.", even in Côte d'Ivoire where, beyond the provocations of Laurent Gbagbo, elected with less than 15% of the polls, the vast majority of people feel no resentment towards the French, nor the huge number of Franco-Ivorian citizens, and few towards the former colonizing power, their main target being rather the rests of paternalism of the French political attitude in Black Africa, leading to political tensions from time to time.
France's intervention in the civil war in Côte d'Ivoire has triggered anti-French violence by the "Young Patriots" and other groups.[citations needed]
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 pushed out of 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.[citations needed]
The behaviour of the French before and during World War II is contested on several points.
- The French government (like that of 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 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. It also allowed the western allies time to rearm.
- The French army resisted for only about six weeks after the Germans invaded in May 1940, even though it had the largest army in Europe at the time. 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. Modern military historians admit French failures, but against the might of the German Blitzkrieg, the charge of cowardice[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]
- Some 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 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 Germany (including Berlin).
Under Charles de Gaulle's presidencies (1961-1970), a series of events bolstered Francophobia :
- De Gaulle refused to harbour US-led NATO bases on the French soil, and thus refused to seat in it.
- De Gaulle opposed the UK's claim to join the EEC in 1962 and again 1965 calling it "the Trojan Horse of America".
- De Gaulle brought his support to Québec's campaign for independence while on visit there in 1967, with a notorious "Vive le Québec libre!", allegedly to help the French-speaking province's claims against the English-speaking Canada.
This series of stance which exemplified "Gaullism", the doctrine of De Gaulle advocating a strong presence among the great nations and independence towards America, was especially resented as it was felt these comments mainly served national goals.
France has remained a colonial power in the 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 protesters. In 1972 the Greenpeace vessel Vega was rammed at Moruroa. The following year Greenpeace protesters 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, New Zealand. 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 Jacques Chirac. After a Greenpeace vessel was boarded by the French navy personnel with tear gas, anti-French sentiments were reignited in Australia. Protesters 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 replied with anti-Australian tu quoque arguments of their own, by discussing Australia's own human rights record, and its supposed ambitions to dominate the Pacific (one cartoon by Plantu portrayed an Australian wearing a very British bowler hat)[citation needed].
The opposition of France to the Iraq War triggered a significant rise in anti-French movement in the United States[citation needed], of which the move to rename french fries freedom fries started by a private fast-food restaurant owner, Neal Rowland, became an internationally known expression. [1]
The swell of anti-French sentiment in the United States during the 2000s was marked[citation needed] but did have historical roots in longstanding US resentment toward France[citation needed]. What is unique in this recent case is the degree to which many media personalities and politicians have openly expressed anti-French sentiments[citation needed].
- Foreign relations of France
- 112 Gripes about the French
- Anti-French sentiment in the United States
- Franco-American relations
- Pardon my French
- (French) Perfide Albion
- Freedom fries
- Quebec bashing
- Cheese-eating surrender monkeys
- Bill O'Reilly
- Jokes from celebrities
- "Stop Bashing France Website"
- "Frenchies’ adventures in French-bashing America"
- Satirical website on anti-French sentiment
- "detailed chronicle on American francophobia
- "Europe unites in hatred of French" (from news.telegraph)
- "French outpace Americans in French-bashing: poll" (Reuters)
- "Detailed chronicle on American francophobia"
Categories: Articles lacking sources from September 2006 | All articles lacking sources | Articles that may contain original research since August 2007 | Articles with limited geographic scope | All pages needing cleanup | Cleanup from August 2006 | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since January 2007 | Discrimination | Articles with unsourced statements since April 2007 | Articles with unsourced statements since June 2007 | Articles to be expanded since January 2007 | All articles to be expanded | Articles with unsourced statements since July 2007 | Francophobia | Anti-national sentiment | Foreign relations of France