Table Of ContentTHE RISE AND FALL OF ANTI-AMERICANISM
The Rise and Fall of
Anti-Americanism
A Century of French Perception
Edited by
Denis Lacorne
Senior Fellow, CERI
Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques
Jacques Rupnik
Senior Fellow, CERI
Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques
Marie-France Toinet
Senior Fellow, CERI
Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques
Translated by
Gerry Turner
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-20785-5 ISBN 978-1-349-20783-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20783-1
© Hachette 1986. First published as L'Amerique dans les Tetes: Un Siecle de Fascinations
et d'Aversions
Translation© Gerry Turner 1990
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-49025-9
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1990
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Amerique dans les tetes. English.
The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism: a Century of French
Perception/edited by Denis Lacorne, Jacques Rupnik, Marie-France
Toinet; translated by Gerry Turner.
p. em.
Translation of: L' Amerique dans les tetes.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-312-04206-6
1. United States -Foreign public opinion, French - Congresses.
2. Public opinion-France-History-20th century-Congresses.
L Lacorne, Denis. II. Rupnik, Jacques. IlL Toinet, Marie-France.
IV. Title.
E183.8.F8A6413 1990
973-dc20 89-29381
CIP
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on the Contributors viii
Foreword X
Theodore Zeldin
Introduction: France Bewitched by America 1
Denis Lacarne and Jacques Rupnik
PART I THE ORIGINS OF ANTI-AMERICANISM:
HISTORY AND HYSTERIA
1 The Pathology of Anti-Americanism 35
Theodore Zeldin
2 From Baudelaire to Duhamel: An Unlikely Antipathy 42
Pascal Ory
3 Anti-Americanism in the Years of Collaboration 55
and Resistance
Robert 0. Paxton
4 The Cold War 67
Michel Winock
PART II THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE INTELLIGENTSIA
AND ITS INFLUENCE ON PUBLIC OPINION
5 Images of the United States in Public Opinion 79
Jacques Rupnik and Muriel Humbertjean
6 The French Intelligentsia Rediscovers America 97
Diana Pinto
7 Anti-Americanism and the Elite 108
Ezra N. Suleiman
8 Sartre, Beauv oir, Aron: An Ambiguous Affair 116
Marie-Christine Granjon
v
vi Contents
PART III ECONOMY: DREAM OF MODERNITY
9 Managerially Yours 137
Richard Armand
10 Modernists and Protectionists: The 1970s 143
Denis Lacorne
11 The Limits of the American Model 160
Christian Stoffaiis
PART IV THE RHETORIC AND REALITY OF ANTI
AMERICANISM IN FOREIGN POLITICS
12 French Anti-Americanism Under the Fourth 169
Republic and the Gaullist Solution
Michael M. Harrison
13 Unruly France 179
Alfred Grosser
PART V THE US CONSTITUTION: MODEL OR MIMIC?
14 The Lawyers' Verdict 189
Marie-France Toinet
15 The Fifth Republic and the American Model 205
Julien Feydy
PART VI WHY ANTI-AMERICANISM IS NOT ALWAYS
QUITE WHAT IT SEEMS, NOR AMERICANO
PHILES QUITE WHAT THEY SAY THEY ARE
16 United States: Model or Bete Noire? 213
Guy Sorman
17 Does Anti-Americanism Exist? 219
Marie-France Toinet
18 By Way of Conclusion 236
Andre Kaspi
Index 244
Acknowledgements
The idea for this volume grew out of a symposium organised five
years ago on French perceptions of the United States. The sympo
sium was sponsored by the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Interna
tionales (CERI) of the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques
(Paris), with the assistance of the Sterling Currier Fund of Col
umbia University (New York).
We wish to express our gratitude to Eric Hornberger of the
University of East Anglia for all his support in making this
collection available to the English-speaking reader. Special thanks
are due to Gerald Turner for his painstaking work on the transla
tions.
D.L. J.R. M-F.T.
vii
Notes on the Contributors
Richard Armand is an industrialist and a graduate of Ecole
Polytechnique.
Julien Feydy is Professor of Political Science at the Universite de
Paris I. He specialises in constitutional issues.
Marie-Christine Granjon, docteur es lettres et sciences humaines
of the University of Paris, is a fellow at the Fondation Nationale des
Sciences Politiques, Paris. She is the author of L'Amerique de Ia
Contestation (1985).
Alfred Grosser is Professor of International Relations at the Institut
d'Etudes Politiques, Paris. His recent books include The Western
Alliance: European-American Relations (1982), Affaires Exterieures: La
Politique de Ia France 1944-1984 (1984), L'Allemagne en Occident
(1987).
Michael M. Harrison is associate director of the Programme for
Strategic and International Security Studies of the Institut Univer
sitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales, Geneva. He is the author
of The Reluctant Ally: France and Atlantic Security (1981).
Muriel Humbertjean is director of sociological studies at the
SOFRES (a French survey institute). She is a co-author of Opinion
Publique (1985).
Andre Kaspi is Professor of History at the Universite de Paris
1-Sorbonne. His publications include Les Americains (1986), Etats
Unis 68 (1988), Franklin Roosevelt (1988).
Pascal Ory is Professor of History at the Universite de Paris
X-Nanterre. He is the author of Les Collaborateurs (1983), the
a
co-author of Les Intellectuels en France de !'Affaire Dreyfus nos jours
(1986) and editor of La Nouvelle Histoire des Idees Politiques (1987).
Robert 0. Paxton is Professor of History at Columbia University.
He is the author of Vichy France (1982), and the co-author of Vichy
France and the Jews (1983).
viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
Diana Pinto is a freelance writer in Paris. She has written numer
ous articles on European intellectuals, European history and sociol
ogy. She received a PhD from Harvard University.
Guy Sorman is the author of La Revolution Conservatrice Americaine
(1983), L'Etat Minimal (1985), and La Nouvelle Richesse des Nations
(1987).
Christian Stoffaes, formerly in the Ministry of Industry, occupies
an executive position with the Electricite de France and is a
professor at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris. He is a co-editor
of French Industrial Policy (Brookings 1985), and author of Fins de
Mondes (published in English by the University of Chicago Press).
Ezra N. Suleiman is Professor of Political Science at Princeton
University. His publications include Elites in French Society (1978),
and Private Power and Centralization in France (1987).
Michel Winock is Professor of History at the Institut d'Etudes
Politiques, Paris. His recent books include La Fievre Hexagonale
(1986), and 1789 L'Annee sans pareille (1988).
Theodore Zeldin, is a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. His
publications include France 1848-1945 (1981), The French (1983) and
Happiness (1988).
Foreword
Theodore Zeldin
This is more than a book about France. For there are now very few
people left anywhere who have not experienced, in some form, the
emotions which are discussed in it. There are very few countries
which have not been obliged to re-define themselves by reference
to what the USA represents or is supposed to represent. But the
predicament of the old world in face of the new world is ceasing to
be quite what it used to be. The USA has long been seen as a vision
of the future, albeit a blurred vision. The inhabitants of the old
world had simply to choose between faith and doubt when
confronted by it. Today, however, it is no longer enough for a
person to decide whether the USA holds out a promise of libera
tion or a threat of stifling oppression, for it has become clear that it
is not so easy to disentangle liberation and oppression.
What is new is that Europeans in particular are beginning to
know the USA at first hand; more and more of them are able to
study, or travel, or live there for a few months or a few years; more
and more have tasted the future without relinquishing their own
past. There are few who have not spent innumerable evenings
relaxing in the fantasy foam-bath of American films. The USA is far
less distant, in both space and time, than it has ever been; indeed,
some element of its culture is to be found, however minimally, in
most people. So it has become a necessity for every individual to
try to understand, as this book does, how dreams and hallucina
tions about the USA, enthusiasms and disappointments, continue
to be born and to die.
English-speaking readers may start by thinking they are being
served yet more exasperating illustrations of that special combina
tion of chauvinism and fashion-mania which is supposed to
characterise the French. But they will soon realise that the perspec
tive of the future which is opened up here is quite different, and for
American readers this perspective may be alarming. So far, Amer
ican attitudes have been decisive in shaping the quality of US
French relations. The basic problem has been that the French
fascination with the USA has not been reciprocated. There is
X
