The American Enemy – The History of French Anti– Americanism - Hardcover

Bowman, Sharon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226723682 ISBN 13: 9780226723686

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2005

Synopsis

Georges-Louis Buffon, an eighteenth-century French scientist, was the first to promote the widespread idea that nature in the New World was deficient; in America, which he had never visited, dogs don't bark, birds don't sing, and - by extension - humans are weaker, less intelligent, and less potent. Thomas Jefferson, infuriated by these claims, brought a seven-foot-tall carcass of a moose from America to the entry hall of his Parisian hotel, but the five-foot-tall Buffon remained unimpressed and refused to change his views on America's inferiority. Buffon, as Philippe Roger demonstrates here, was just one of the first in a long line of Frenchmen who have built a history of anti-Americanism in that country, a progressive history that is alternately ludicrous and trenchant. The American Enemy is Roger's bestselling and widely acclaimed history of French anti-Americanism, presented here in English translation for the first time. With elegance and good humor, Roger goes back 200 years to unearth the deep roots of this anti-Americanism and trace its changing nature, from the belittling, as Buffon did, of the "savage American" to France's resigned dependency on America for goods and commerce and finally to the fear of America's global domination in light of France's thwarted imperial ambitions. Roger sees French anti-Americanism as barely acquainted with actual fact; rather, anti-Americanism is a cultural pillar for the French, America an idea that the country and its culture have long defined themselves against. Sharon Bowman's fine translation of this magisterial work brings French anti-Americanism into the broad light of day, offering fascinating reading for Americans who care about our image abroad and how it came about.

About this title

Product Description

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Review

"[The] book has many strengths but collapsing the complex web that is French anti-Americanism into a workable theoretical framework may be his greatest contribution. His introduction is probably the smartest and most responsible ten pages ever written on the subject of French anti-Americanism. Anyone at all interested in the subject, or in any aspect of French history, should read it. . . . [His work] is highly readable and accessible, without sacrificing scholarly integrity."--Seth Armus "H-France Reviews "

"A brilliant polemic, whose wit and historical digging capture both the persistent and platitudinous qualities embedded in French writing on America. Disturbing, but also intensely amusing, Roger will force his audience to think not only about France, but about the United States, and the legacies that come with massive power."--Michael Miller "American Historical Review "

"A short review can hardly do justice to the erudition, irony, and wit on display in Roger's 'genealogy' of anti-Americanism. The chronological scope alone is remarkable. . . . One hopes that American readers will see this book not as a means for confirming their own prejudices about France but as a wise guide for thinking about how xenophobias of all kinds travel from one generation to the next."--Herrick Chapman "Journal of Modern History "

"The American Enemy makes lively reading, due in no small part to the author's energetic, ironic commentary. Roger--a professor at the Sorbonne--has assembled a gallery of all the negative commonplaces, stereotypes and cliches about the United States: bad climate, savage natives, Indian-killers, slavedrivers, robber barons, capitalist fat cats, unlivable cities, soulless scientists, etc. The caricatures are occasionally drawn by some of France's finest pens, and they get our attention. As this culture of complaint builds and ramifies, we witness the birth and development of an intellectual reflex."--Stephen Sartarelli, The Nation
-- (12/24/2003)

"Philippe Roger, the author of works ranging from studies of the Enlightenment to Roland Barthes, makes brilliant mischief from the very first words of his "genealogy" of French anti-Americanism. . . . This enlisting of the nexus of love and hate, of slavery to opposing passions, is an exhilarating way of launching a study of attitudes, of liberating the atavism of animosities from the contingencies of events and circumstances. Roger argues that the roots of French anti-Americanism lie in the doubts of Enlightenment science that the New World was a viable one at all."--Bill Grantham, World Policy Journal
-- (06/01/2003)

"A brilliant and exhaustive guide to the history of French Ameriphobia."--Simon Schama, New Yorker
--Simon Schama"New Yorker" (03/10/2003)

"Roger concentrates on one country--France--and takes the long, historical view. French anti-Americanism, he shows in The American Enemy, goes back to the eighteenth century. . . . Anti-Americanism goes back a long way, and Philippe Roger does an impressive job of unravelling its various strands and tracing their ancestry."--Henri Astier, Times Literary Supplement
-- (01/10/2003)

"Philippe Roger has written a superb history of French anti-Americanism, elegant, learned, witty. This enjoyable exercise, in the very best traditions of French scholarship, richly deserves to be published in English translation, unabridged. The book's argument is far too subtle and intricate to summarize briefly, but the word "genealogy" in the title should be taken seriously. . . . In nearly six hundred pages of close textual exegesis, Roger demonstrates not only that the core of French anti-Americanism is very old indeed, but also that it was always fanciful, only loosely attached to American reality."--Tony Judt, New York Review of Books
-- (05/01/2003)

"Mr. Roger almost single-handedly creates a new field of study, tracing the nuances and imagery of anti-Americanism in France over 250 years. He shows that far from being a specific reaction to recent American policies, it has been knit into the very substance of French intellectual and cultural life. . . . His book stuns with its accumulated detail and analysis."--Edward Rothstein, New York Times
-- (03/14/2005)

"The great novelty of Philippe Roger's meticulously researched book, first published in 2002 and now translated into English, is how much further back French anti-Americanism reaches. . . . A bible for students of anti-Americanism."--Economist
-- (04/16/2005)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0226723682
• ISBN 13: 9780226723686
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 536