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Cassandra's policies

French prophecies of an American empire from the Civil War to the Cold War

École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, roger{at}ehess.fr

The image of the American empire in French minds is the result of a long sediment of representations, a layering of panicked discourses. Creating this imperial image was central to crystallizing the anti-American discourse in France. Historically, the French perception of the United States of America as an imperial power came about very early on, predating Theodore Roosevelt's imperious foreign policy and even the Spanish— American war of 1898. It was born under the Second Empire and arose from the antagonism postulated between the Latins and the Anglo-Saxons. It temporarily amalgamated the real British empire and the virtual American empire in collective loathing; but it would quickly isolate the Yankee, depicting him as a `exacerbated Anglo-Saxon'. American imperialism was all the more menacing and dangerous for being underhanded. Denouncing the predatory nature of the undeclared American empire became a way for the French to fend off critics of their own (colonial) imperialism, presented as a civilizing mission. The less the Americans behaved like classic colonizers, the more they revealed their will to dominate. By not staking a forthright claim as a competitor for control of the world, the United States worked to undermine the very foundations and legitimacy of European dealings outside of Europe. The Americans were thus the winners on two fronts: from their abstract colonizing they reaped the benefits without the costs; and they could also proclaim themselves the champions of decolonization and proffer the Europeans exasperating moral lessons. In another development, between the late 1930s and the 1950s, the constant use of colonial metaphors allowed a new and decisive anti-American discourse to emerge: France was routinely described as having unwittingly turned into a `colony,' a `dominion', a `conquered land', a `new State of the Union'. From an unfair competitor hiding his own domineering game and sabotaging benevolent European hegemony, the Yankee had thus become, at the time of the Cold War, an overtly hostile presence in an `occupied', `dominated', `colonized' France.

Key Words: anti-Americanism • colonial metaphors • French— American representations • imperialism

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