Home › Books & Reviews › Capsule Reviews › The Rise And Fall Of Anti-Americanism: A Century Of French Perception

The Rise And Fall Of Anti-Americanism: A Century Of French Perception

Edited by Denis Lacorne, Jacques Rupnik and Marie-France Toinet
Reviewed by By Fritz Stern
Spring 1991
Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.
Edited by Denis Lacorne, Jacques Rupnik and Marie-France Toinet
St. Martin's
1990
258 pp.
$39.95

A collection of essays by leading scholars and writers, originally composed for a 1985 conference, dealing with the U.S. image from the first vision of the American republic to recent times, when French intellectuals dropped some of their tired stereotypes. A useful, suggestive work that deals with America as a model, even a model for the presidential system of the Fifth Republic, and in several essays makes the rather obvious point that pro- and anti-American feelings can coexist among the same people.

Related

Essay, Jul 1964
The French People and De Gaulle
Michel Gordey

What is the reaction of the French people to the politique de grandeur-the policy which, in the name of France, General de Gaulle is projecting on a world scale? Before this question can be answered we must first ask: How is French policy shaped and decided? Next, how is it made known to parliament and public opinion? Third, do the broad masses of the people have access to adequate and objective information on which to base their judgment of this policy? Only then can we turn to the question: What is their judgment?

Read
Essay, Jul/Aug 2006
The End of French Europe?
Steven Philip Kramer

When French voters rejected the proposed EU constitution last year, they revealed a profound lack of confidence not just in Europe, but in France itself. Long the driver of European integration, Paris these days can barely steer its own ship of state. Jacques Chirac is a big part of the problem. But France's troubles run deeper.

Read
Essay, Jul 1965
De Gaulle: Pose and Policy
Herbert Lüthy

This is the A.B.C. of the art of politics. De Gaulle's mastery of mystère, which is above all the art of ambiguity and of Pythian formulas, permitted him, when faced with the gravest problem he ever had to meet-the Algerian War-to man?uvre among the reefs for four years, to envisage in turn every possible or impossible solution and to see them all miscarry. First there was the offer made to the Algerians to become "whole-share French citizens;" then the mission given the army to "integrate the souls" of the Algerian people; then the grand vision of an African California grouping Algeria and French Black Africa in a zone of prosperity around the oil of the Sahara; then the still ambiguous concept of an "Algerian Algeria," independent but associated-all leading finally to the collapse of French colonization in North Africa and the accords of Evian, now hardly more than a scrap of paper. At the end of this tortuous course, the wisdom of the statesman has been "to accept things as they are," to respect the Evian Agreements on his side and to accept unflinchingly the violation of them by the other side, in order to show that he is satisfied-and to keep the future open.

Read