Crêpes of Wrath

Quote of the day, from the little dead dude:

When he snatched the crown away from the compliant pope and crowned himself in 1804, he supposedly said to his brothers, “If only Dad could see us now!”

Them Again

Why does this not surprise me?

Former "Nightline" reporter Dave Marash has quit Al-Jazeera English, saying Thursday his exit was due in part to an anti-American bias at a network that is little seen in this country.

Marash said he felt that attitude more from British administrators than Arabs at the Qatar-based network.

Marash was the highest-profile American TV personality hired when the English language affiliate to Al-Jazeera was started two years ago in an attempt to compete with CNN and the BBC. He said there was a "reflexive adversarial editorial stance" against Americans at Al-Jazeera English.

Emphasis added.

Because like the big brother who never stopped picking on you, it's always the British.* We have this conflicted relationship with France. But I think it comes from a mutual awareness of our common quirks -- we're both trying to be the dominant moral force for Enlightenment virtues in the world, so there's natural rivalry.

The French gave us the Statue of Liberty. They also gave themselves one, staring east toward its bigger sister. And they scattered other replicas across the country, including this one:

A third replica is the Bordeaux Statue of Liberty. This 2.5 m (8 ft) statue is in the city of Bordeaux in Southwest France. The first Bordeaux statue was seized and melted down by the Nazis in World War II. The statue was replaced in 2000 and a plaque was added to commemorate the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks. On the night of March 25, 2003, unknown vandals poured red paint and gasoline on the replica and set it on fire. The vandals also cracked the pedestal of the plaque. The mayor of Bordeaux, former prime minister Alain Juppé, condemned the attack.

Which, the Wikipedia artfully manages to not mention, was three days into the Iraq War.

Can you imagine the British giving America a Statue of Liberty? French visitors to early 19th century America, such as de Tocqueville and Michel Chevalier, were careful observers and able to see the flow of democratic forces in U.S. society. The British writers who visited practiced a rhetorical scorched earth policy to feed the hunger of the home audience for horror stories about stupid, violent, arrogant, boorish America. The few exceptions were ones who never saw the place but used it as an imaginary ideal to criticize what they disliked in English culture and British governance.



*As always, our friend Canker is a noble exception to that generalization.

Is Paris Smoking?

[posted by Callimachus]

France should be France. What's more, France should work at being France. I don't mind their collective snootiness about American culture one bit so long as they are actively and constructively building an alternative out of the same Western social and cultural inheritance. I think it's healthy and necessary in an era of inevitable hegemony.

Then we can compare and see which works better in which cases. It makes evolutionary sense to keep several active models running at once.

Which is why this, though probably inevitable in the EU, is depressing:

Not too long ago, public smoking bans were regarded as a uniquely American phenomenon — a puritanical gesture, held in ridicule by any self-respecting, Gauloise-puffing Frenchman. Over time, however, the public health burden of smoking-related illnesses has spurred a number of industrialized nations to follow the American example. When the initial steps of a public smoking ban took effect in Paris this February, French opinion polls reported that 70 percent of Parisians were in favor of the prohibition.

I don't use tobacco in any form. Never did, and generally can't stand the stink of it. But what might stink worse is the creeping nannyism of the "your pleasure creates a public health expense for everyone, therefore 'the majority,' meaning the interested bureaucracy, has the power to force you to knock it off."

Vive la Différence

[posted by Callimachus]

François Clemenceau reviews De la Culture en Amérique by Frederic Martel, a book making some waves in France these days. "In France," Clemenceau writes, "Martel has pitched the equivalent of a bombshell into the cultural fishbowl ..." That "bombshell" probably is a scatological euphemism.

Essentially, the book shatters a taboo in up-ending the widespread French assumption that in America “culture” is reserved for a happy few (generally rich) cultivated people while the rest of the country has a steady diet of no culture or cartoonish low-brow pop culture. Martel contests this picture of what happens in America, painstakingly documenting a situation in which key living cultural experiences and values are fostered in the U.S. system to reach a vast public throughout a very culturally diverse nation. In cataloguing the myriad of ways that culture reaches audiences and rewards creators in the United States, Frédéric Martel, 40, a former French cultural attaché in Boston, carefully demonstrates how this American approach brings “culture” to a wide public, including marginal groups of the population who are often excluded from mainstream experience. And Martel constantly underscores how American culture flourishes without ever having to depend on government help and without ever becoming vulnerable to the vagaries and bureaucratic distortions of a state-administered system.

It's amazing what you European types can notice about us when you actually spend some time in the United States -- and I don't mean "New York City."

An unspoken message has been carefully planted by Martel in his work: that key features of the American approach would be easy for France to adopt in a way that made the French system more adaptable and perhaps more sustainable.

Working with an eye to the idea of transplanting American techniques to France, Martel describes in detail – thanks to hundreds of interviews – the mainstays of the institutional landscape in the United States. Starting with the history of private patronage and endowments, Martel carefully catalogues public-private partnerships between museums and corporate sponsors. He describes how cultural policies in the United States are totally decentralized thanks to local cooperation between cities and private foundations. He dwells on the theme of how Americans learn about the arts, as performers and as public, from early childhood right through university, from institutions of learning that function on their own without any direction, from a single cultural arbiter laying down a monolithic vision from the top.

Which explains the de Tocqueville echo in the title. I'm not sure it would work, though. I don't want France to imitate America. I live among the Amish, and I rather like the idea of having parallel active responses to contemporary realities.

Histeria Historia

[posted by Callimachus]

When French historians write American history it looks remarkably like ... well, what happens when European media write American stories.

With the illogicality of malice, Mr. [Patrice] Higonnet characterizes Mr. Bush as simultaneously incompetent and omnipotent, feckless and relentless, the bully of his advisers and the dupe of his advisers. Reckoning the sum of these contradictions tells us nothing about Mr. Bush or about America, but it tells us a great deal about the passionate, self-delighting, deeply irresponsible hatred that now prevails even among the most prestigious and best educated precincts of the Left. It is a book that Mr. Higonnet's sympathizers will read with vigorous nods, and everyone else will read with despairing shakes of the head.

The argument of Mr. Higonnet's book, such as it is, can be quickly summarized. America, he writes with an air of having made a great discovery, has done good things in its long history, but it has also done bad things. This by itself would not seem to distinguish America from any other country — for instance, from France, which is Mr. Higonnet's constant point of reference. (Although "Attendant Cruelties" was apparently written in English, it is really intended for a French audience: Both its frequent reference to French figures and events, and its general lack of inwardness with American history, suggest that its ideal reader lives in Paris.)

But America's failures and crimes, to Mr. Higonnet as to most conscientious Americans, seem worse than those of other nations, precisely because America has always held itself to a higher standard. Our promise of democracy was painfully slow of fulfillment. Freedom for white men went along with the inexpiable sin of slavery, with the genocide of the Native Americans, and with economic and social oppression toward women, immigrants, and minorities. The twinship of good and evil in American history is the great American theme — not just for historians, but for novelists and poets and philosophers.

Mr. Higonnet, however, has no new light to shed on this darkness. As he recites the familiar chapters of the American story — the Constitution and the Civil War, Progressivism and the New Deal — he never penetrates even the topmost layers of the mystery. Instead, he continually resorts to a banal formula: "Americans, as individuals and as a people, have frequently moved from nation to nationalism without real understanding." This is shallow enough, but it quickly becomes clear that even generalities like "nation" and "nationalism" — or Mr. Higonnet's favorite alternatives, "inclusion" and "exclusion" — are not being employed in any concrete sense. They are vague, slippery terms, which can be used with equal justice on both sides of every question. Was the American decision to annex the Philippines an example of nationalism — a desire to increase our power and prestige — or universalism — a desire to spread the blessings of republican government around the world? Was the Senate's refusal to accede to the League of Nations, a decision that Mr. Higonnet deplores, a case of vicious exclusiveness — a cynical indifference to the interests of mankind — or of virtuous patriotism — a refusal to tarnish America with the sins of Europe?

In neither case is it helpful to view American history in Mr. Higonnet's Manichean terms. It is the inextricability of good and evil that makes American history so tragic and so moving; and this ancient knot will not yield to Mr. Higonnet's crude separation of sheep and goats. For what really drives his judgments, it becomes clear, is not any true vision of America's best self; it is the proximity or distance of America to the ideals of the contemporary European left. When America acts like a centralized, statist, internationalist social democracy, Mr. Higonnet approves; when it does not, he does not.

I'm confident some of the perenial America-bashers among the overseas bloggers could do a better job at this kind of polemical mucking than the good historian does. He should stick to his day job and leave the dirty work to those who are experienced at it.

At Home

[posted by Callimachus]

"I don't believe in what people call 'realpolitik', which rejects values and still doesn't win any deals. I don't accept what's going on in Chechnya, since 250,000 dead or persecuted Chechens are more than a detail of world history. Because General de Gaulle wanted freedom for everyone, the right to liberty is theirs, too. To be silent is to be an accomplice, and I don't want to be any dictator's accomplice."

Nicolas Sarkozy, Jan. 14, 2007, as quoted by André Glucksmann, here. Glucksmann I discovered late, on the eve of the Iraq war, as one of the brave stand of liberal European voices (the intellectual "300"?) who supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein on the grounds of humanitarian justification. They were closer to my position on that matter than most Americans I listened to about it.

In this article, Glucksmann takes the unusual (for him) step of backing a candidate to lead France. In this case, Sarkozy (against Ségolène Royal).

I'm a Francophile -- and yes, I've been there, and yes, they were rude to me, too. I think the reason America and France dislike each other so much is that they are so much alike, and deep down they know it. It's like they're trying to occupy the same moral high ground in the world, and there's not room for both.

Listen to Glucksmann plead for the "large-hearted France" that he feels is eclipsed by realpolitik and other fetishes, and see if it doesn't resonate with your sense of American ideals (if you have such a sense):

But a large-hearted France has never forgotten the oppressed. Vietnamese boatpeople fleeing communism, the embattled Trade Unionists of Solidarity, those who suffered under Argentinean fascism, Algerians confronted by terrorism, victims of torture in Chile, Russian dissidents, Bosnians, Kosovans, Chechens… In no other country were these barbarities and the resistance to them discussed so much. Our ability to open our hearts to our brothers worldwide is etched into our cultural heritage – witness Montaigne, Victor Hugo, the 'French doctors' and those who would emulate them.

Sarkozy, of course, is the politician vilified on the French left as an "American neoconservative with a French passport." A worse insult hardly can be imagined (but where are the cries of dismay from those who counter-snarked against the "John Kerry looks French" smear?). And, yes, it goes back long before the invasion of Iraq. As in all such cases, the slur reveals only the poverty of ideas of those who repeat it.

Exiling people, and stigmatising them as anti-French, was for a long time the prerogative of a right which could come up with few answers to the successes of Léon Blum or Roger Salengro. The left deserves better that that.

The tale is familiar on many levels, and the one that resonates for me is the notion of old, sound liberal ideas edged out of their ancestral political homes, finding a refuge in a revitalized, center-right. Just as the rootless and dissident of all lands have found homes over the decades in Manhattan or the Left Bank:

Wallowing in its narcissism, the left found itself badly wanting when Nicolas Sarkozy broke with every tradition of the right and claimed to stand for the rebels and the oppressed, as well as the young communist agitator Guy Môquet, martyred Muslim women, Simone Veil (who eradicated the suffering caused by clandestine abortions), Brother Christian à Tibhirine, and the Spanish Republicans. Instead of bemoaning the way he has appropriated the socialist legacy, allow me to rejoice. When I recognise Victor Hugo, Jean Jaurès, Georges Mandel, Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Albert Camus in this candidate's speeches, I feel somewhat at home.

Self-Interest

[posted by Callimachus]

This is why I have no love for foreign policies shaped by "national interest." Former French Prime Minister Raymon Barre, who seems like a rather unlikable fellow overall, defends a Vichy official who collaborated in the Holocaust on the grounds that he was following orders, and legitimately, since France had no compelling national interest to justify his doing otherwise.

“Opposing the deportation of Jews had not been a matter of major national interest.”

And so, perhaps, it wasn't. Unless you build humanitarianism and virtue into the fabric of what it means to be you, national interest is amoral at best. And it seems to me France has been admirably consistent over the years in pursuing policies based principally, if not solely, on national interest. I admire the consistency; I don't typically admire the results. I think it rather betrays the French revolutionary ideal and the better nature of the French people, but that was betrayed already, and long ago, and more than once.

Is America any different? There may be a discernible direct self-interest angle in most of what we undertake. As big as the U.S. is, you don't need a lot of imagination to find it even in the most altruistic acts. We have perceived interests everywhere, in everything. If America were to give $1,000 to each and every man, woman, and child in the poorest nation on earth tomorrow, someone would quickly point out the percent of goods sold in that country made by U.S.-financed corporations and call it all a big showroom stunt.

And if you never really know anything about America or Americans, you probably will do that: Find the self-interest thread, and dismiss everything else as pious nonsense. But that seriously misreads us, and the same people who wish to see us as a selfish nation smirking behind a hypocritical creed also enjoy mocking the earnestness with which we Americans cherish outmoded ideas like spreading freedom and encouraging democracy, and the alleged naivete of our belief that we have a special national obligation to oppose tyrants and fight against what is wrong or evil.

You can have us as just Frenchmen in sheep's clothing, or as a bunch of starry-eyed do-gooder fools. But you can't have both. But they do try.

France's Bad Idea

[posted by Callimachus]

When our friends the French have a bad idea, they really have a stinker:

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday. ...[A]nyone publishing such images could face up to five years in prison and a fine of ... US$98,537, potentially a harsher sentence than that for committing the violent act.

It turns out there is a point to all this, other than to make France look random and vindictive:

During parliamentary debate of the law, government representatives said the offense of filming or distributing films of acts of violence targets the practice of “happy slapping,” in which a violent attack is filmed by an accomplice, typically with a camera phone, for the amusement of the attacker’s friends.

Is that really such a big problem over there that it requires such a wide net to catch it?

Ségolène Royal

[posted by Callimachus]

The woman's got ideas. I'm a big fan of ideas, even if 9 out of 10 of them are terrible. There's no other way to get to that tenth one.

In a two-hour speech to about 10,000 supporters north of Paris, she laid out a 100-proposal platform, pledging to raise pensions, to increase the minimum wage to €1,500, or about $2,000, a month and to guarantee a job or further training for every youth within six months of graduating from university.

She also said that randomly selected citizens' juries would watch over government policy and that juvenile delinquents could be placed in educational camps run by the military.

...A former schools minister, she vowed that she would tackle the social exclusion in the suburbs by reducing the number of students in classes. She also promised free tutoring for students that have difficulties keeping up, and workshops for parents to teach them how to discipline their children.

... Royal said she would tax companies in relation to what share of their profits is reinvested in equipment and jobs, and what portion is paid to shareholders. She also promised to abolish a flexible work contract for small companies and hold a national conference in June on how to increase salaries.

Indeed, she seemed to have something to offer to most groups in society without saying how much the combined measures would cost: Under her presidency, she said, young women would get free contraception, all young people would get access to a €10,000 interest-free loan and the handicapped would see their benefits rise.

But my big question is, if she wins, will that force media outlets in the U.S. to break out the full font set and start using accented vowels required to properly spell "Ségolène?" And will copy editors take to the streets in protest?

Revive la France

[posted by Callimachus]

Christian Delacampagne, a professor of French literature and philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, writes about Robert Redeker, a small-town French high-school philosophy teacher who published an op-ed article in "Le Figaro" responding to the controversy over Pope Benedict's remarks about Islam. Redeker wrote of Islam’s attempt “to place its leaden cloak over the world.”

If Jesus was “a master of love,” he wrote, Muhammad was “a master of hatred.” Of the three “religions of the book,” Islam was the only one that overtly preached holy war. “Whereas Judaism and Christianity are religions whose rites reject and delegitimize violence,” Redeker concluded, “Islam is a religion that, in its own sacred text, as well as in its everyday rites, exalts violence and hatred.”

Having been posted online, the article was read all across France and in other countries as well, and was quickly translated into Arabic. Denunciations of Redeker’s “insult of the prophet” spread across the Internet. Within a day after publication, the piece was being condemned on al Jazeera by the popular on-air preacher (and unofficial voice of Osama bin Laden) Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi. In Egypt and Tunisia, the offending issue of Le Figaro was banned.

As for Redeker himself, he soon received a large number of threats by letter and e-mail. On an Islamist website, he was sentenced to death in a posting that, in order to facilitate a potential assassin’s task, also provided his address and a photograph of his home. Fearful for himself and his family, Redeker sought protection from the local police, who transferred the case to the national counter-espionage authorities. On their advice, Redeker, his wife, and three children fled their home and took shelter in a secret location. Since then, they have moved from city to city, at their own expense, under police protection. Another teacher has been appointed by the French Ministry of Education to replace Redeker, who will probably never see his students again.

It spirals downward from there. Delacampagne's lament is not over the Islamic reaction (or the lack of an audible counter-view from that community), which may say as much as anything about the state of the world. It is for the general reaction of the French elite class. I'm glad to say André Glucksmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy spoke up for fundamental French liberties. As did, to his credit, Dominique de Villepin.

But the vast majority of responses, even when couched as defenses of the right to free speech, were in fact hostile to the philosophy teacher. The Communist mayor of Saint-Orens-de-Gameville, echoed by the head of Redeker’s school, deplored the fact that he had included his affiliation at the end of the article. France’s two largest teachers’ unions, both of them socialist, stressed that “they did not share Redeker’s convictions.” The leading leftist human-rights organizations went much farther, denouncing his “irresponsible declarations” and “putrid ideas.” A fellow high-school philosophy teacher, Pierre Tévanian, declared (on a Muslim website) that Redeker was “a racist” who should be severely punished by his school’s administration. Even Gilles de Robien, the French minister of education, criticized Redeker for acting “as if he represented the French educational system”—a bizarre charge against the author of a piece clearly marked as personal opinion.

Among members of the media, Redeker was scolded for articulating his ideas so incautiously. On the radio channel Europe 1, Jean-Pierre Elkabach invited the beleaguered teacher to express his “regret.” The editorial board of Le Monde, France’s newspaper of record, characterized Redeker’s piece as “excessive, misleading, and insulting.” It went so far as to call his remarks about Muhammad “a blasphemy,” implying that the founder of Islam must be treated even by non-Muslims in a non-Muslim country as an object not of investigation but of veneration.

To be sure, Redeker’s language had not been gentle. But since when has that been a requirement of intellectual discourse in France? One can often find similarly strong language in, say, Les Temps Modernes, the journal founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and on whose editorial board Redeker has long served. Yet, to judge by the response to his “offense,” large sectors of the French intellectual and political establishment have carved out an exception to this hard-won tradition of open discussion: when it comes to Islam (as opposed to Christianity or Judaism), freedom of speech must respect definite limits.

How did France reach this point?

He goes on to give an answer. I urge you to read it.

Department of Bad Ideas

[posted by Callimachus]

I haven't seen much about it over here, but there's a huge row in Europe now over a Socialist-sponsored bill making its way through the French parliament that would make it illegal in France "to question the Armenian genocide" of 1915.

Jacques Chirac is "re-explaining."

The Turks see ulterior motives:

It is increasingly becoming clear that French, Austrian, Danish and Dutch opposition to Turkey's EU membership is based not only on pure political interests. There is a much deeper process at work. We are dealing with a new version of Turcophobia.

But Vartan Oskanian, the Armenian minister of foreign affairs, writing in the International Herald Trib, says this is appropriate:

The message from France is clear: So long as Turkey refuses to confront its own history, others will feel impelled to do so. If, on the other hand, Turkey embarks on the difficult road of acknowledgement and reconciliation, then others will have reason to step aside and let the process take its course. Instead, we note with dismay that this very strong message is being lost on Turkey. It continues to surround itself with myths, evade the past, and thus elude the future. As we observe the reactions in Turkey, we find it disingenuous for a country that itself doesn't allow free speech and criminalizes even the exploration of certain areas of its own (and therefore our) history to be so indignant over a law that criminalizes the rejection and denial of that same history.

As sympathetic as I am to the Armenians, I have to agree here with Erkki Tuomioja, Finland's foreign minister. “I personally think that ‘genocide’ is the right term to describe what was experienced at that time and I hope Turkey will become ready to accept this reality,” he said. But:

“Parliaments shouldn’t make laws regarding historical facts. Lawmakers should never intervene in such self-evident and self-questioning political arguments and the atmosphere of debate that emerges in the aftermath through legislating them.”

France Steps Up

France steps up. As I read it, all it took was a little shame, a little assurance, and a lot of desire not to see the Italians take the lead.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - France said on Thursday it was ready to send an extra 1,600 troops to bolster a revamped U.N. force for Lebanon, bringing the total French contingent to 2,000 and making it easier to recruit other nations.

France initially offered only to double its force in Lebanon to 400, disappointing many U.N. diplomats who had expected Paris to provide the backbone of the mission.

However, President Jacques Chirac said France decided to dispatch many more troops after winning assurances from the United Nations that the troops would be able to defend themselves fully if they came under attack and could use force to protect civilians.

"Two thousand French troops will thus be placed under the United Nations in Lebanon. France is ready, if the United Nations wishes, to continue commanding this force," Chirac said in a televised address.

Italy, which had promised 2,000 to 3,000 troops, earlier said it had won U.S. blessing for its leadership of the force and that it was confident Europe, especially France, would firm up its so far limited military commitment.

Prime Minister Romano Prodi said President George W. Bush had told him by telephone of his "positive" view of Italy's offer to lead the force. He added Bush was also leaning on allies to offer troops.

The Bush administration later welcomed Chirac's offer.

I think this is great news, and I'm personally glad France lived up to my good opinion of her.

French Lessons

A while ago, I wrote a three-part post (starting here, continuing here, and concluding here) on the war between France and Algerian insurgents in the 1950s. It seemed to me the essential birth of the asymmetrical brand of warfare that has so hamstrung American foreign policy from Vietnam to Iraq.

The revolt of Algeria in 1954, and the French attempt to repress it, are worth examining in some detail. For one, the revolt itself entwined the nightmares that evolved in the first half of the 20th century: in the fascist states, Lenin's Russia, and the Palestine wars. And when they merged they gave the world the modern terrorist movement in the form we are fighting it now, in al Qaida especially. Also, the French response offers some instructive counter-examples.

Others have noticed this, too, of course. Now the Rand organization has republished a timely analysis of the Algerian War [PDF alert] by David Galula, who deliberately sought a leadership position on the French side during the rebellion, the better to understand the tactical challenges.

Timely, because, as Bruce Hoffman writes in his forward, "This inability to absorb and apply, much less even study, the lessons learned in previous counterinsurgency campaigns is a problem that has long afflicted the world’s governments and militaries when they are confronted with insurgencies. Guerrilla groups and terrorist organizations, on the other hand, learn lessons very well."

Insurgent and terrorist movements as diverse as al Fatah, the African National Congress, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and the Tamil Tigers, for example, have cited the Algerian struggle’s influence on the strategies and tactics that they later adopted. Among the officer corps of most countries’ standing armies, however, counterinsurgency -- at least until very recently -- was disdained as a “lesser included contingency” unworthy of contemplation, much less serious study.

See if any of this sounds familiar:

• “In my zone, as everywhere in Algeria, the order was to ‘pacify.’ But exactly how? The sad truth was that, in spite of all our past experience, we had no single, official doctrine for counterinsurgency warfare.”
  
  
• “‘Ordinary banditry,’ said a highranking government official in Algiers.... By the time the insurrection was finally recognized for what it was, only drastic political and military action would have reversed the tide, and slowly in any case....”
  
  
• “The rebels realized that they could achieve the greatest psychological effect on the French and on world opinion at the cheapest price by stepping up terrorism in the main cities, notably in Algiers, which served as headquarters to most French and foreign correspondents and thus acted as a natural amplifier. A grenade or a bomb in a café there would produce far more noise than an obscure ambush against French soldiers in the Ouarsenis Mountains.”
  
  
• "Our forces were vastly superior to the rebels. Then why couldn’t we finish with them quickly? Because they managed to mobilize the population through terror and persuasion.... It was therefore imperative that we isolate the rebels from the population and that we gain the support of the population. This implied that under no circumstances could we afford to antagonize the population even if we had to take risks for ourselves in sparing it.”
  
  
• “If we distinguish between people and rebels, then we have a chance. One cannot catch a fly with vinegar. My rules are this: outwardly treat every civilian as a friend; inwardly you must consider him as a rebel ally until you have positive proof to the contrary.”
  
  
• “Reflecting on who might be our potential allies in the population, I thought that the Kabyle women, given their subjugated condition, would naturally be on our side if we emancipated them.”
  
  
• “While the insurgent does not hesitate to use terror, the counterinsurgent has to engage in police work.... The police work was not to my liking, but it was vital and therefore I accepted it.”
  
  
• “Then, five top leaders of the rebellion, including Ben Bella, had been neatly caught during a flight from Rabat to Tunis. Their capture, I admit, had little effect on the direction of the rebellion, because the movement was too loosely organized to crumble under such a blow.”
  
  
• “If there was a field in which we were definitely and infinitely more stupid than our opponents, it was propaganda.”
  
  
• “The borders with Morocco and Tunisia would easily have required 100,000 men to control with reasonable effectiveness, given their length and the local terrain. In order to save personnel, it was decided to build an artificial fence, a project which was completed along both borders by the spring of 1958.”
  
  
• “Throughout the war our prisoner camps were open for unannounced inspection by the International Red Cross, the reports of which were made public.... In the best camps, efforts were made to sift the tough prisoners from the soft; where it was not done, the camps became schools for rebel cadres.”
  

Algeria was the first modern terrorist thugocracy, a nation born of a cowardly father -- European lack of will -- and a cruel mother -- unrelenting terrorism on a grand scale. Naturally, the country fell into complete economic collapse. Twenty years after he served at its first president Ben Bella admitted, "We have nothing. No industry -- only scrap iron." That would have been bad enough, but throughout the '60s and early '70s, Algeria served as "the chief resort of international terrorists of all kinds." The terrorist-state survived there, and spread its seeds across Africa and the Middle East.

The FLN in Algeria polished the model of 20th century state power in the hands of rotten-hearted leaders. Islamists later would take that model in hand, and, under a coat of green paint, attempt to pass it off as the new Caliphate.

[Hat tip: Marc at American Future, who passed this along privately]

The Terror

I have subscribed to many magazines over the years and eventually dropped them all, but we still get the New Yorker. As irritating as I find its politics, I still get a thrill out of it when I find articles like this one.

Adam Gopnik reviews two new books on the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, including one I've read, David Andress' “The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France.”

I almost didn't read it; I got through the introduction and almost threw it aside. It wasn't the revisionism of the work that repulsed me, but the historian's unfortunate choice to try to relate his topic to modern times. On the one hand, Andress drifted into a tone-deaf and pompous warning to modern America that it is in danger of going the way of Revolutionary France and -- what? He doesn't say, exactly. Are there guillotines in our future?

Really, though, he's not addressing America at all; Andress is a lecturer in history at Portsmouth University, and as far as I can determine he hasn't spent much time over here. His "America" is the America of the pages of the Guardian and the Independent and other left-wing British newspapers, a violent, fascist theocracy.

At the same time, Andress has fallen into a trap that tempts every historian of a controversial topic. In working to understand the minds of people who do horrible things -- which is a necessary aspect of the historian's craft -- he's come to understand these people in a degree that makes him truly sympathetic to them, and he's forgotten that the rest of us haven't made that mental effort and don't share his sympathies.

So his introduction had a headache-inducing quality, and what he wrote seemed to boil down to: "Beware, America! Of falling into the ways of the Reign of Terror -- which really was an understandable and justified reaction to political realities." Aspirin, please.

But the book as a whole is full of good history and good stories. Just, if you're going to read it, skip the intro and the conclusion (often, with history books, the opposite approach will give you all you need).

Andress' book was worth writing, if for no other reason than to inspire Gopnik's essay. Which considers the Terror and the context it gets as a historical event now safely buried in time. And he reminds me that part of the purpose of a historian is to push past the statistics and dig up the corpses and show us the blood again:

Even if we accept that the revolutionaries were not the only bloody-minded madmen in Europe, do we end our reading with a new sense of proportion? Whatever academic scholarship may insist, surely a sense of proportion is the last thing we want from history—perspective, certainly, but not proportion. Anything, after all, can be seen in proportion, shown to be no worse a crime than some other thing. Time and distance can’t help but give us a sense of proportion: it was long ago and far away and so what? What the great historians give us, instead, is a renewed sense of sorrow and anger and pity for history’s victims—for some luckless middle-aged Frenchman standing in the cold gray, shivering as he watches the members of his family being tied up and having their heads cut off. Read Gibbon on the destruction of the Alexandria library by the Christians, or E. P. Thompson on the Luddites—not to mention Robert Conquest on the Gulag—and suddenly old murders matter again; the glory of the work of these historians is that the right of the dead to have their pain and suffering taken seriously is being honored. It is not for history to supply us with a sense of history. Life always supplies us with a sense of history. It is for history to supply us with a sense of life.

As for lessons for the present generation, here's one that Andress should have written in place of the conclusion he published:

The bloodlust of the time makes the attempt to trace the Terror to any single intellectual source, or peculiar circumstance—to Enlightenment rationalism gone mad, or to the paranoia of the encircled Republicans—feel inadequate to the Terror’s essential nature, which was that it didn’t matter what the ideology was. The argument that a taste for the ideal and the tabula rasa leads to terror, after all, would be more convincing if its opposite—a desire for an organic, authentic, traditional society—didn’t lead to terror, too. The Red Terror led to a White Terror; Robespierre’s head had hardly fallen before the Gilded Youth were attacking the now helpless Jacobins. It sometimes seems as if history had deliberately placed Hitler and Stalin side by side at the climax of the horror of modern history simply to demonstrate that the road to Hell is paved with any intention you like; a planned, pseudo-rationalist utopianism and an organic, racial, backward-looking Romanticism ended up with the same camps and the same carnage. The historical lesson of the first Terror is not that reason devours its own but that reason cannot stop us from devouring each other.

Naughty Marianne

One of the things I'll always admire about the French is their ability to turn a phrase (it's one reason French history is so delightful to write). Like this one:

It is difficult to be optimistic about France’s future, particularly when hearing what Jacques Godfrain, a Conservative MP, had to say when he emerged from a lunch with Chirac and his ministers in February. "There was a strong sense of agreement to the effect that France is ungovernable. But that she likes being governed."

That, by the way, is from a fascinating profile of Ségolène Royal, a stylish, 52-year-old mother of four from Poitiers who just might become France's first female president.

Fallujah-sur-Seine

The rioting continues tonight in France.

No Pasaran observes from France that "Talk radio and web forums are coming down squarely in favor of Interior Minister Sarkozy with calls for a heavy hand when dealing with rioters." This jibes with other observations I've heard and read over the years since Sept. 11. The French elite and the media and a certain vocal segment of the population thrive on being anti-American. But don't make the mistake of thinking all French are like that. Paris is not France. In the military, and especially in the countryside, we have many friends still, and it has nothing to do with gratitude for D-Day.

Meanwhile, a familiar face is seeking a "dialogue" with the rioters.

This from the AP story:

Minister of Social Cohesion Jean-Louis Borloo said the government had to react "firmly" but added that France must also acknowledge its failure to have dealt with anger simmering in poor suburbs for decades.

Minister of Social Cohesion? Is that, like, Rush Chairman at Phi Delt?

Captain Ed notes that even the Nazis didn't have the heart to burn Paris. [The title of this post I got from him as well.]

And it's not just France, though Paris dominates the headlines. Many Internet types are following the events via Brussles Journal; I'm one of them. It's got the goods.

One of the more chilling perspectives on the riots is here. Dalrymple sees a convergence of two storms: the first is an indifference to law enforcement that grew in a Western Europe that, for decades, was comfortably middle class and relatively crime free.

The laxisme of the French criminal justice system is now notorious. Judges often make remarks indicating their sympathy for the criminals they are trying (based upon the usual generalizations about how society, not the criminal, is to blame); and the day before I witnessed the scene on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, 8,000 police had marched to protest the release from prison on bail of an infamous career armed robber and suspected murderer before his trial for yet another armed robbery, in the course of which he shot someone in the head. Out on bail before this trial, he then burgled a house. Surprised by the police, he and his accomplices shot two of them dead and seriously wounded a third. He was also under strong suspicion of having committed a quadruple murder a few days previously, in which a couple who owned a restaurant, and two of their employees, were shot dead in front of the owners’ nine-year-old daughter.

The other is the familiar nexus of poverty, unemployment, alienation, and concrete jungle housing projects that proved so deadly for American cities in the 1960s.

A kind of anti-society has grown up in them—a population that derives the meaning of its life from the hatred it bears for the other, “official,” society in France. This alienation, this gulf of mistrust—greater than any I have encountered anywhere else in the world, including in the black townships of South Africa during the apartheid years—is written on the faces of the young men, most of them permanently unemployed, who hang out in the pocked and potholed open spaces between their logements. When you approach to speak to them, their immobile faces betray not a flicker of recognition of your shared humanity; they make no gesture to smooth social intercourse. If you are not one of them, you are against them.

But the gasoline, and the match, on this volatile mix is extremist Islam. Cue Francis Fukuyama:

Contemporary Europeans downplay national identity in favor of an open, tolerant, "post-national" Europeanness. But the Dutch, Germans, French and others all retain a strong sense of their national identity, and, to differing degrees, it is one that is not accessible to people coming from Turkey, Morocco or Pakistan. Integration is further inhibited by the fact that rigid European labor laws have made low-skill jobs hard to find for recent immigrants or their children. A significant proportion of immigrants are on welfare, meaning that they do not have the dignity of contributing through their labor to the surrounding society. They and their children understand themselves as outsiders.

It is in this context that someone like Osama bin Laden appears, offering young converts a universalistic, pure version of Islam that has been stripped of its local saints, customs and traditions. Radical Islamism tells them exactly who they are--respected members of a global Muslim umma to which they can belong despite their lives in lands of unbelief. Religion is no longer supported, as in a true Muslim society, through conformity to a host of external social customs and observances; rather it is more a question of inward belief. Hence Mr. Roy's comparison of modern Islamism to the Protestant Reformation, which similarly turned religion inward and stripped it of its external rituals and social supports.

Another Image

From "France in 1938":

The French delegation left for the Munich airport almost exactly twenty-four hours after arriving. Once again, a well-programmed crowd offered cheers, and Ribbentrop provided the escort. During the flight Daladier sat silent and morose, worried about the reception he would receive at Le Bourget, about how the French would react to his having betrayed Czechoslovakia and France's promises. As the plane circled for landing, he and others saw a massive crowd awaiting them. Expecting jeers, hisses, rotten fruit, and maybe worse, Daladier declared stolidly: "They are going to mob me, I suppose. ... I appreciate their feelings," and insisted on absorbing their wrath by being the first off the plane. But as he stood dumbfounded on the gangplank, thousands surged forward carrying flags and flowers, shouting "Hurrah for France! Hurrah for England! Hurrah for peace!" Daladier turned back to Léger and cursed, "The God-damned fools!"

French Slavery

Recently I read a piece by an American living in Europe, recounting how he had found himself in heated argument with a Frenchman who hammered him with America's rap sheet of historical faults and crimes -- it looked like the usual list, if you're familiar with that dreary experience.

Among them, of course, was slavery. The American wrote that he largely conceded the point of slavery to his foe, remarking only that it was not really an American institution, just a Southern one.

This seemed lame to me, not only because it was, in fact, a national institution, as I have been at pains to tell people for some years now, but because the American could have turned the tables nicely on the Frenchman, if he'd known a little more about French history.

So, in case this ever happens to you, be prepared. Here's a primer. Really, the essential numbers can be summed up like this:

• Slaver voyages: France, 4,200; British North America/United States, 1,500.
  
• Slaves transported: France 1,250,000, British North America/United States, 300,000.
  
• Slaves delivered to: French West Indies: 1,600,000, British North America/United States, 500,000.*
  

In the history of the Atlantic slave trade, the French turned four times as many Africans into slaves as the Americans did, they used them far more brutally, and French slavers not only got a head-start on Americans, they continued the slave trade -- legally -- until 1830, long after the rest of Europe had given it up. And they kept at it clandestinely until after the U.S. Civil War. France officially abolished slavery in its colonies only 14 years before Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and then only under pressure from slave uprisings.

The French New World settlers outstripped the Americans in their greed for slave labor. When the U.S. acquired Louisiana from France, the first governor sent out from Washington reported back that, "No subject seems to be so interesting to the minds of the inhabitants of all parts of the country which I have visited as that of the importation of brute negroes from Africa. This permission would go further with them, and better reconcile them to the government of the United States, than any other privilege that could be extended to this country. ... White labourers, they say, cannot be had in this unhealthy climate."

* * *

French interlopers had jumped into the Atlantic African slave trade in the early 16th century, a century before the first Yankee set sail for Africa. Nearly 200 ships bound for Sierra Leone sailed from three Norman ports between 1540 and 1578. A Portuguese renegade, sailing under the French flag as Jean Alphonse, was one of the pioneers of the "triangle trade" between Africa, the New World and Europe.

The French government sought to promote plantation economies in its West Indies colonies. With capital, credit, technology -- and slaves -- borrowed from the Dutch, these islands began to thrive as sugar export centers. The Dutch established the first successful French sugar mill in 1655. By 1670, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and St. Christopher had 300 sugar estates.

Realizing slaves were the key to this, a monopoly Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, largely financed by the state, was organized in 1664. A French fleet took many factories from the Dutch in Gorée and the Senegambia in the 1670s. In 1672, the French government offered a bounty of 10 livres per slave transported to the French West Indies. This spurred the formation of a second monopoly company, Compagnie du Sénégal, founded in 1673. By 1679 it had 21 ships in operation.

French slavery totals in the 17th century were lower than they might have been due to incompetence, bankruptcies, and mismanagement and strict royal rules about buying from, or selling to, other empires. By the 1720s, however, French private traders had broken the monopolies and the slave trade boomed under the French flag.

During the 1730s alone, the French shipped probably more than 100,000 slaves from Africa. The government raised the bounty per slave delivered to 100 livres, and in 1787 upped it again to 160. By the 1760s the average number of slaver ships leaving French ports was 56 a year, which does not sound like a large number, but they were big ships, averaging 364 slaves per boat. The attendant horrors of the Middle Passage, of course, were multiplied in the bigger ships. In 1767 the French overtook the British in sugar production for the first time.

Conditions on sugar plantations were harsh (though French sugar colonies were no better or worse than Spanish, Dutch, or British ones). During the eight-month sugar harvest, slaves sometimes worked continuously almost around the clock. Accidents caused by long hours and primitive machinery were horrible. In the big plantations, the captives lived in barracks; women were few and families nonexistent.

Compared to this, North American cotton plantation slavery featured much less ferocious labor and allowed family units to exist. Which is one reason France required a steady flow of thousands of slaves a year -- to replace the ones the French had worked to death -- while America's slave population grew naturally even after the U.S. slave trade had ended.

Nantes by far was France's leading slave port. Between 1738 and 1745, Nantes alone carried 55,000 slaves to the New World in 180 ships. All told, from 1713 to 1775 nearly 800 different vessels sailed from Nantes in the slave trade. But Bordeaux, Le Havre, and La Rochelle were leaders in the trade, too. Saint-Malo, Harfleur, and Rouen also played a part. French slave ships bore such ironic names as Amitié (La Rochelle) and Liberté (belonging to Isaac Couturier in Bordeaux). The novelist Chateaubriand's father, of Saint-Malo, was active in the slave trade in the 1760s. In 1768, Louis XV expressed his pleasure at the way "les négociants du Port de Bordeaux se livrent avec beaucoup de zèle au commerce de la traite des nègres."

In the late 1660s, the French settled the abandoned western half of the island of Santo Domingo, and by the early 1680s this new colony, which the French called Saint-Domingue, had 2,000 African slaves. By the 1740s, Saint-Domingue had replaced Martinique as the empire's largest sugar producer. Its 117,000 slaves that year represented about half the 250,000 slaved in the French West Indies. Coffee, introduced in 1723, only made the plantations more profitable -- and increased the demand for slaves.

By the late 1780s Saint Domingue planters were recognized as the most efficient and productive sugar producers in the world. The slave population stood at 460,000 people, which was not only the largest of any island but represented close to half of the 1 million slaves then being held in all the Caribbean colonies. The exports of the island represented two-thirds of the total value of all French West Indian exports, and alone were greater than the combined exports from the British and Spanish Antilles. In only one year well over 600 vessels visited the ports of the island to carry its sugar, coffee, cotton, indigo, and cacao to European consumers." [Herbert S. Klein, "The Atlantic Slave Trade," Cambridge, 1999, p.33]

To keep the supply of African captives flowing, the French government had permanent establishments at the Senegal River and Whydah on the Gold Coast. French free traders worked seasonal camps from the Senegal to the Congo and even East Africa, where they became serious competitors to the Portuguese in Mozambique. The slaves they bought there went to the French Indian Ocean island colonies, which also were thriving on sugar exports.

Slavery went deeper than this in French society. In the 17th century, the French navy galleons were manned by slaves, including hundreds of Turks (some of them captured by the Austrians after the Siege of Vienna). In 1679, the Senegal Company provided 227 African slaves for this purpose.

Nor was their slaving activity limited to Africans. As late as 1820s the French were engaged in a slave trade in Sumatra, on the island of Nias (in the news recently as an earthquake site), taking 1,000 slaves a year from there to Ile de Bourbon (modern Réunion).

The rise of the French slave trade meant the number of black Africans living in France grew. A law of 1716 clarified their position by allowing masters from the islands to keep their slaves captive while in France. But a law of 1738 decreed black slaves could not stay in France more than three years, otherwise they would be confiscated by the Crown (and likely put to work on the royal navy's galleys).

The motive for this was the French authorities' eagerness to preserve their nation's racial purity, as illustrated by a royal declaration of 1777 which forbade entry of any black into France because "they marry Europeans, they infect brothels, and colors are mixed." The restrictions rarely were enforced, however, and six years after the 1777 decree a ministerial circulaire complained that blacks continued to be imported. Merchants in Nantes kept so many black men and women in their fine houses that they could give négrillons or négrittes to members of their household as tips, and by the time of the Revolution there were enough nègres in Nantes to form a battalion (which got a dreadful reputation for murder and pillage).

* * *

The leading figures of the Enlightenment condemned slavery, but they made little impact on French popular or political opinion. Abbé Raynal in 1770 published a book (in Amsterdam) arguing that slavery was contrary to nature and thus wrong. The clergy of Bordeaux, however, demanded it be prohibited as an outrage to religion and the parlement of Paris ordered it burned by the public executioner.

The French Revolution brought such antislavery men to power. English abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson were delighted and encouraged the French liberals to put their words into action. The Declaration of the Rights of Man in August 1789 had stated, "Men are born free and are equal before the law."

So you might think, in the interest of consistency, the French would have ended the slave trade and liberated their chattels at that time. You'd be wrong.

A Société des Amis des Noirs had formed. One of its leaders was Condorcet, who urged France to follow the example of America, which had set an end date to the slave trade and where leaders from all sections looked forward to the day, expected soon, when American slavery would die a natural death. Condorcet held up America as an example to France in this regard because America's leaders knew they would "debase their own pursuit of liberty if they continued to support slavery."

But the négriers of Nantes were powerful and influential. The Constituent Assembly took up the topic of the slave trade in March 1790. So far from curtailing slavery or the slave trade, it simply passed a decree, "Whoever works to excite risings against the colonists will be declared an enemy of the people."

The French Assembly even had the equivalent of the American three-fifths clause, which gave the West Indian colonies 10 deputies in Paris, even though they numbered only a few tens of thousands of free settlers. But the Assembly rejected a few free mulattoes who turned up among the West Indian deputies and refused to seat them.

Shortly afterwards, a delegation from the newly founded and revolutionary Armée Patriotique of Bordeaux reached Paris and told both the Jacobin Club and the Assembly that five million Frenchmen depended on the colonial commerce for their livelihood, and that both the slave trade and West Indian slavery were essential for the prosperity of France. Another committee was then entrusted to make a report on slavery. That body, however, did little more than denounce attempts to cause risings against the colonists. Mirabeau was shouted down when he tried to oppose this. The assembly voted for the committee's proposals for inaction and, until 1793, the French slave trade continued to receive a subsidy in the form of a bonus for every slave landed. Nantes in fact enjoyed its best year ever as a slave city in 1790, sending forty-nine ships to Africa. For the slave merchants in that politically radical city, the word "liberty" seems to have signified the idea that the slave trade should be open to all. [Thomas, p.522]

Mulattos in Saint-Domingue, learning that their hopes for equality in the new system had been quashed in the Assembly, rose in revolt, and turmoil spread through the colonies. This forced the leaders of the Revolution to reopen the issue and condemn slavery -- in principle. It was not enough. Saint-Domingue's slaves then rose in a bloody insurrection. There were 450,000 blacks, most of them slaves, against only 40,000 whites (mulattoes numbered about 50,000).

Finally, in August 1791, the Assembly declared anyone who landed in France to be free, but it was too late to save Saint-Domingue. The British had occupied the colony and re-instated slavery, and by the time they handed it back to France at the Peace of Amiens (1802) the French had gotten over their flirtation with emancipation and were back in the slavery business. Saint-Domingue fell in the only successful slave revolt in history and was reborn as the free nation of Haiti. Meanwhile the shortage of sugar in Paris that resulted from the slave revolt precipitated the riots that brought the Revolution crashing down from its high ideals into authoritarian repression.

* * *

In 1794 the Convention in Paris declared the universal emancipation of slaves, but it did not actually outlaw the slave trade. Yet even this proved unenforcable; the colonies required slaves, and under Napoleon, slavery was reintroduced.

The French never recovered Haiti, though they coveted it for a generation, and France's slave trade had been temporarily shut down by the Napoleonic Wars. But after the restoration of the Bourbons the French retained Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana on the South American continent, all major sugar-producing colonies.

If it had not been for British pressure, the slave trade might still be tolerated in France. But the British had taken a strong anti-slavery position. The French press railed at the British for using morality as a cloak for their supposed desire to rule the world. And the French desire to keep the British at bay, and to compete with them in the seas, seems to have had a lot to do with the French decision to turn officially against the slave trade.

But it also is true that an abolitionist movement had taken root among the fashionable in Paris, headed by Madame de Staël and the Marquis de Lafayette. It was built on admiration of the English abolitionists, a rise of Christian morality, and a cult of le bon nègre. They began to circulate petitions and pamphlets. Prominent French writers led the opposition to the change, with racist diatribes against Africans.

When the Duc de Broglie became prime minister, he brought abolitionist sympathies and opinions with him into the government. In 1817 the French government published a decree curtailing the slave trade to French colonies, but the enterprising merchants of Nantes and Bordeaux simply switched their destinations to Cuba.

The entire slave trade finally was declared illegal in France in March 1818. But that merely converted a tolerated trade to a clandestine one. With the local banks and political interests dominated by slave traders and their money and marriage ties, there was little hope of enforcement. French officers expelled from the Navy after the Restoration had taken up the slave trade. Their comrades still in the fleet turned a blind eye to their activities, or were easily bribed to do so. The French filled in the market for slaves in Cuba and Brazil in place of the Spanish, who had foresaken the trade as immoral.

Twice as many ships left French ports on the slave trade in 1819 as had sailed the year before. In 1820, the British Navy's annual report on the fleet's work in interdicting the slave trade noted that the Americans were next to Britain in their "good intentions," "sincerity," and practical work to end the trade. Spain, Holland, and Portugual got bad grades. "But France, it is with deepest regret I mention it, has countenanced and encouraged the slave trade, almost beyond estimation or belief." It was so bad that "France is engrossing nearly the whole of the slave trade," and in the 12 months ending in September 1819 "60,000 Africans have been forced from their country, principally under the colours of France." They were taken mostly to Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Cuba. [Paul Johnson, "The Birth of the Modern," p.330]

As late as 1825, slave chains and manacles could be openly purchased in Nantes. On average, French négriers in the 1820s brought in 4,000 slaves per annum. Guadeloupe was the center of this activity, absorbing 38,000 slaves from 1814-1830. Martinique followed with 24,000, and French Guiana with 14,000. "[I]t was an unusual trade in that French merchants from Nantes continued to dominate the trade to the end and were the only Europeans still active in the trade after 1808." [Klein, p.198] As late as 1830, Nantes kept 80 ships engaged in the slave trade.

The French, like the Americans, even after they had ended the slave trade refused to stand for the British Navy -- the only maritime power large enough to police the Atlantic -- boarding and searching their vessels. Under cover of national prde, the merchants of Nantes and Bordeaux continued to ship slaves even after the American government had, like the British, begun to use its authority to curb the trade.

In 1820, a British cruiser chased a French slaver, La Jeune Estele, whose captain, once he saw himself being overtaken, started throwing barrels overboard. In each was a pair of slave girls, age 12 to 14. Public opinion in Britain was shocked, but in France the people blamed the British.

In 1821, an over-zealous U.S. Navy lieutenant named Stockton seized four French-flagged vessels off Africa, convinced that they really were slavers from North America. He manned them with American crews and sailed them to Boston. But the French government was outraged -- at least one of the vessels, La Jeune Eugénie, certainly was French, and it was going for slaves. The French ambassador called on Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and loudly threatened war if satisfaction was not made. President Madison hastily backed down and assured the French that the Americans no longer would search vessels under French or any other foreign flag. Stockton's supicions were reasonable, however. Slave traders of other nations often sailed under the French flag to avoid British searches.

Only in 1830, under Louis-Philippe, was the slave trade made a crime and punishment enforced. A treaty with Britain even allowed British naval searches of French vessels in certain cases. Yet as late as 1848, recently imported slaves from West Africa were found on Martinique and Guadeloupe.

During the 1840s, the government in Paris talked of the eventuality of emancipation, but it always found a reason not to act. One common excuse was that the government was too cash-strapped to pay the slaveowners the compensation they deserved for the loss of their property.

Slavery finally was abolished in Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and Réunion by the government that came to power after the 1848 revolution, spurred by slave uprisings in the colonies. A year later legislation passed granting the owners of France's 248,560 slaves compensation from a sum of $120 million francs.

Even the end was not really the end. From 1850 to 1870 some 18,400 Africans were carried to the French West Indies illegally, probably by Cuban slavers.

*Figures are from Hugh Thomas, "The Slave Trade," Simon & Schuster, 1997. The numbers necessarily are estimates, but historians are in broad agreement about them. There's a "low" and a "high" figure for African slavery, and Thomas' numbers represent the low figure. But the overall comparison does not change much if you use the (earlier) higher numbers: Slaves delivered to French West Indies come in as 1,635,700, compared to 559,800 for British North America and the U.S.

"The American Enemy"

George Walden begins his review of the English translation of Philippe Roger's "The American Enemy" with a depressing, if juicy, anecdote. When the U.S. invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, opinion polls around the world showed a plunge in American popularity -- everywhere except France. Why?

The French opposed the invasion vehemently, but the country was already so saturated in anti-Americanism that the index scarcely flickered.

The review is itself a brief history of the warped French contempt for all things American. "Warped" not because America never deserves anyone's bad wishes, but because the French consistently never bothered to look at it before dismissing it. Their hatred of us is irrational -- "a national psychosis " -- and the facts of what we do make little difference.

Walden hits all the highlights: Jefferson's moose, de Tocqueville's valiant swim against the mainstream. De la démocratie en Amérique was printed in France in a mere 500 copies. He's the Europeans who, most Americans agree, got us "right," warts and all, but he's the one the French don't read. But they'll make a best-seller of a book alleging Americans blew up the Twin Towers themselves.

Anti-Americanism increased in bitterness during the interwar years, in inverse proportion to French perceptions of their own national decline. The American role in liberating France earned a nod of appreciation - although obviously it had only come to Europe's aid to enslave her in debt - but with the domination of Marxism in postwar France it was soon back to the old game. Leftists argued that America was the true totalitarian country, more dangerous than the Nazis because of its pretence that its dictatorship didn't exist - the last trick of the devil himself, n'est-ce pas?

"Rabid animals" was Sartre's somewhat rabid phrase for Americans after the execution of the Rosenbergs (Communist spies whose treason has recently been confirmed). His solution was to "break all ties that bind us to America". This he did, refusing to go there, which proved useful, since he never had to justify his increasingly surreal claims about American Cold War atrocities to US audiences. The boycott by the intellectual Left had the effect of sealing France even more hermetically in her anti-American neuroses.

Walden can sympathize, and so can I, with the attempt by France to maintain its independent cultural track in the face of the bulldozer power of the American producers and market in everything from cinema to cheese. I've spent some time in France -- I love it there, frankly. I wish they could, somehow, live like there was no America, as they clearly wish to live.

But that's not the same thing as virulent America-hating. Not by a long shot. And as Roger seems to demonstrate, the hatred goes back a long way before the first Hollywood blockbuster or the first Napa Valley vineyard.

A long way before President Bush, too. Would John Kerry's abilities in speaking French have mattered? Walden thinks not. President Bush "has not improved things," but "French antagonism remains constant, whoever is in charge in Washington -- a malignant infatuation with the force of perverted love."

I was disappointed to learn that President Bush's recent appointment as ambassador to France speaks no French. But then I thought about it and concluded, what's the point of being able to talk to people who won't listen?

For all its amusing vignettes, Philippe Roger's message is sober, and a foreword asks an excellent question: how far is the demonising of America, not just in France but the world over, helping to convert a war of words into a more fearsome conflict?

It is a good question. The "We are all Americans now" attitude in Le Monde, which had a fruitfly's lifespan anyhow, was hardly the only French reaction to 9-11. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard admitted "prodigious jubilation in seeing this global superpower destroyed. ... Ultimately they [Muslims] were the ones who did it, but we were the ones who wanted it."

Our Friends in Europe

Germany ...

France.