Anti-French sentiment in the United States

The victory of the American colonists against the British was heavily dependent on the financial and military support of France. Despite the positive view of Jeffersonian Americans during the French Revolution, it awakened or created anti-French feelings among many Federalists. An ideological split was already emerging between pro-French and anti-French sentiment, with John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and their fellow Federalists taking a skeptical view of France, even as Thomas Jefferson and other Democratic-Republicans urged closer ties. As for the Revolution, many or most Federalists denounced it as far too radical and violent. Those on the Democratic-Republican side remained broadly supportive. Pierre Bourdieu and Stanley Hoffmann[1] have suggested that one of the roots of anti-French sentiments in the United States and anti-American sentiments in France is the claim of both countries that their social and political systems are "models" that universally apply. France's secularism was often something of an issue for the Americans. There are some similarities there to the Federalists' reaction to perceived French anti-clericalism.

In the 1790s, the French, under a new post-revolutionary government, accused the United States of collaborating with the British and proceeded to impound Britain-bound US merchant ships. Attempts at diplomacy led to the 1797 XYZ Affair and the Quasi-War fought entirely at sea between the United States and France from 1798 to 1801, heightening tensions between the two countries and leading to an increase in anti-French feelings in America.

Relations somewhat improved after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. American cultured classes embraced French styles and luxuries after the Civil War: Americans trained as architects in the École des Beaux-Arts, French haute cuisine reigned at elite American tables, and upper-class women in the US followed Parisian clothing fashions. Following World War I, a generation of rich American expatriates and bohemians settled in Paris. That, however, did not help with the populist image of a liberal elite of American francophiles.

In the Southern United States, some Americans were anti-French for racist reasons. For example, John Trotwood Moore, a Southern novelist and local historian who served as the State Librarian and Archivist of Tennessee from 1919 to 1929, lambasted the French for "intermarrying with the Indians and treating them as equals" during the French colonization of the Americas.[2]

The rout of French forces during the German invasion of France in 1940 came as a profound shock to Americans. As details of the defeat, specifically of the general surrender of the French Army against Nazi German forces in the Armistice of 22 June 1940.

When the United States entered the war, although France was ostensibly an ally, many factors contributed to significant anti-French sentiment. First, in Operation Torch, as the United States sacrificed thousands of soldiers' lives to liberate the French people, neither French resistance forces nor the opposing French Vichy authorities were easy to handle. The Allies succeeded in slipping French General Henri Giraud out of Vichy France and offered him the command of Free French forces in North Africa. Giraud, however, insisted on being nominated commander-in-chief of all the invading forces. Because this position was reserved for General Dwight Eisenhower, Giraud remained a spectator instead. At battles like Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, tens of thousands of Americans lost their lives liberating France .

Within months of French liberation from the Germans, tensions rapidly rose between the locals and US military personnel stationed there. 112 Gripes about the French was a 1945 handbook issued by the United States military to defuse some of this hostility.

France's troubled history in Indochina and in the Algerian War of 1954-1962 led to some US criticism of France's ongoing colonial aspirations.

Relations worsened even more when French President Charles de Gaulle emphasized France's role as an independent power, in part by removing France from the joint military structure of NATO in 1966 and by vetoing Britain's entry into the EEC in 1961. De Gaulle's support for Quebec independence, as exemplified by his Vive le Québec libre speech in 1967, annoyed the Canadian, British and American governments.[5]

In 1966, as part of the military withdrawal from NATO, de Gaulle ordered all American soldiers to leave French soil.[6]

However, anti-French sentiment returned to the fore in the wake of France's refusal to support US proposals in the UN Security Council for military action to invade Iraq. While other nations also opposed the US proposals (notably Russia; China; and traditional US allies, such as Germany, Canada, and Belgium), France received particularly ferocious criticism.[11]

In 1990s popular culture, the derogatory phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" began as a joke on The Simpsons in 1995, used by Groundskeeper Willie's character in a satirical manner. National Review contributor Jonah Goldberg claimed credit for making the term known, with its implicit characterization of the French as cowards.[12] In early 2003, George Will from The Washington Post described retreat as "an exercise for which France has often refined its savoir-faire since 1870."[13] Anti-French displays also came in the form of bumper stickers, and t-shirts calling for the United States to invade: "Iraq first, France next!"[14] and "First Iraq, then Chirac!"[15]

Freedom fries is a political euphemism for French fries. The term came to prominence in 2003 when the then Republican Chairman of the Committee on House Administration, Bob Ney, renamed the menu item in three Congressional cafeterias in response to France's opposition to the proposed invasion of Iraq.

• Radio interview WOR 710 NY with Alec Berg on French Boycott
• FrenchBoycott.org from 2003