Anti-French sentiment


Anti-French sentiment refers to any manifestation of hatred, prejudice, and discrimination against the French people or the Francophonie. It is most generally based upon a disdain for French culture or the French language, and has been recorded across several countries and regions for centuries. The phenomenon may be motivated by a variety of factors, such as broader feelings of xenophobia or due to certain political developments involving France. Historically, French rivalries with the British and the Germans, among others, largely shaped anti-French sentiment in Europe. The Age of Discovery enabled the spread of this sentiment to varying degrees in the colonized Americas, particularly in British colonies that developed in direct competition with French colonies. Today, political and cultural anti-French sentiment is prominent in many African countries that were colonized by France, as well as in some parts of Anglophone Canada.

By region

Europe

United Kingdom

England and France have a long history of conflict, dating from before the Battle of Hastings, when William the Conqueror claimed the English throne. Before becoming King of England, William found conflict with his liege Henry I of France several times and conquered some neighbouring fiefs. The relationship between the countries continued to be filled with conflict, even during the Third Crusade. The medieval era of conflict climaxed during the Hundred Years' War, when the House of Plantagenet fought unsuccessfully for control of the French throne and lost almost all French holdings, which resulted in future English kings being more culturally English from Henry III onwards. Previously, they had largely spoken French and lived in French castles much of the time. Richard the Lionheart, who was famous for his feud with French King Philip, spent most of his life in France and as little as six months of his reign as King in England.
In contrast, relations between Scotland and France were generally good. The French throne sided numerous time with Scotland in its conflicts with the English throne, making this relationship compound the existing direct hostility. The Auld Alliance treaty of 1295 provided for mutual support between Scotland and France in the event of an English attack on either. This was replaced by the 1560 Treaty of Edinburgh between England, Scotland and France.
The modern history of conflict between Britain and France stems from the rise of Britain as a primary commercial and maritime power in Europe in the early 18th century onward and the threat it posed to France's ambitions. Hostility toward and strategic conflict with France's similar interests 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 has been perceived in Britain as a prolonged Franco-British conflict to determine who would be the dominant colonial power. British hostility to the Catholic Church, which dated back to earlier conflicts with Catholic Habsburg Spain, contributed to attitudes towards the French because France was also seen as a Catholic power, and the majority of the British people were Protestants. England and later Britain joined continental European states in resisting the rising French imperialism during the reign of Louis XIV and the Napoleonic Wars. Britain also resented France's intervention in the American Revolutionary War. This historical antagonism became ingrained in the culture of both countries but was mostly overcome by their successful alliance to stop German aggression in World War I and World War II in the first half of the 20th century.
The dimensions of the conflict in Britain were as much cultural as strategic. Indeed, British nationalism, in its nascent phases, was in large part an anti-France phenomenon and the attitudes involved extended well beyond who won what on various battlefields:
  • France was the most powerful Catholic state for much of the modern period and anti-Catholic sentiments had been widespread in Britain since the Act of Supremacy in 1534.
  • 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, but the story is based upon the disputed premise that those involved had never seen a Frenchman before.
Robert Graves wrote shortly after the First World War during his time at Oxford University as an undergraduate that:

Germany

Beginning with the French invasions of Germany in the late 18th century, France became the century-long rival of Germany. The rising German nationalist movement also considered France their greatest enemy because France not only had temporarily conquered much of Western Germany during the Napoleonic Wars but also was the country most strongly opposed to the idea of a unified German empire and wanted Germany to remain divided into many individual states.
In this time, the myth of the so-called hereditary enmity came into being, according to which the Romanic French and the Germanic Germans had been antithetic enemies ever since the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, a notion that was inherently unhistorical. In the 19th century, anti-French sentiment became commonplace in German political discourse even if the deep cultural interrelation between the two could never be blanked out completely.
Several German nationalist anthems were written against the French, most prominently Die Wacht am Rhein. After the German victory in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, the anniversary of the decisive Battle of Sedan was made a semiofficial national holiday in the German Empire.
After the culminations of Franco-German enmity in both world wars, the two actively gave up their mutual animosities in the second half of the twentieth century. The most prominent symbol of this development is the picture of heads of government François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl holding each other's hands at a ceremony at the military cemetery in Verdun in 1984. Today, Germany and France are close political partners and two closely connected nations. A joint Franco-German television network, Arte, was founded in 1992.

Ireland

Recently, there have been a few instances of friction between France and the Republic of Ireland over political and economic issues that led to expressions of Irish francophobia. One of these was when Ireland rejected the Lisbon treaty in a referendum in 2008 and Nicolas Sarkozy commented that Ireland "must vote again" – as it indeed did the following year. Another source has been the French criticism of Ireland's low corporate taxation rate and the perceived French resistance to conceding an interest rate reduction on the International Monetary Fund/European Union loan arrangement until Ireland "moves" on this rate, which was perceived as interference.
Francophobia in Ireland rose in the aftermath of a controversial FIFA World Cup playoff game between the two countries, leading to protests outside the French Embassy in Dublin. Irish businesses exploited the occasion in a mostly light-hearted way, with promotions offering discounts for every goal scored against France and special reductions to celebrate the elimination of France from the tournament.

Russia

Some Russians mock French people with the nickname "Lyagushatniki", literally "frog people".

Italy

On Easter Monday 1282, at the Church of the Holy Spirit just outside Palermo, at evening prayer, a Frenchman harassed a Sicilian woman. This single event led to the massacre of 4,000 Frenchmen over the course of the next six weeks, and the government of the French-born king Charles I of Anjou lost control of the island.

Spain

Goya painted several famous pictures depicting the violence of the Peninsula wars during the Napoleonic Era. In particular, the French actions against Spanish civilians during the Peninsular War drew a large amount of criticism, as illustrated by The Third of May 1808 painting.
From 5 to 6 June 1808 Spanish clergyman Baltasar Calvo organized a massacre of 400 French civilians in Valencia.

Africa

in Africa led to anti-French sentiments among colonised peoples, particular during periods of conflict between the French and various African states. Imperial disputes with other European colonial powers in Africa also led to anti-French sentiments. More recently, the French policy of maintaining the Françafrique has been characterized as neocolonialism and led to further anti-French sentiments. France is also accused of privileging its interests, by denying the interests of African states.
Despite promises of French presidents and politicians to normalize relations with African countries and review the policy of the Elysée Palace towards Africa, Paris currently continues to use economic aid and the French language as leverage. However, the African continent has become much more independent in recent decades. Nowadays almost all attempts of the French government to influence African countries end up with discontent and growth of anti-French sentiment.

Algeria

The Algerian War had been underway since 1954. The Évian Accords of March 18, 1962, brought an end to the conflict. The Accords, which were reached during a cease-fire between French armed forces and the Algerian nationalist organization the FLN, began the process of transfer of power from the French to the Algerians. The Évian Accords intended to guarantee the rights and safety of the Pieds-Noirs, the French-speaking European settlers in an independent Algeria.
In 1959, the Pieds-Noirs numbered 1,025,000, and accounted for 10.4% of the total population of French Algeria. However, rumors had already spread among the Pieds-Noirs that their choice would be between "the suitcase or the coffin". On the morning of July 5, 1962, the day Algeria became independent, seven companies of FLN troops entered the city of Oran when several European settlers fired shots at them. An outraged Arab mob swept into the Pieds-Noir neighborhoods, which had already been largely vacated, and attacked the estimated 40,000 remaining Pieds-Noirs. The violence lasted several hours, during which the mob cut the throats of many men, women and children.
The number of Pieds-Noirs who fled Algeria totalled more than 800,000 between 1962 and 1964.