Description
"In "Sweet Land of Liberty," Tom Sancton traces the arc of the American image in the eyes of the French left against the backdrop of the major historical developments in both countries between the Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871. Along the way, Sancton weaves in the voices of scores of French observers, known and unknown, including Alexis de Tocqueville, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Louis Blanc, Alphonse de Lamartine, Jules Michelet, Auguste Blanqui, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Elisée Reclus, Léon Gambetta, and Georges Clemenceau. The French left-broadly speaking, those who embraced the ideals of liberty and popular government-were naturally drawn to the American example as both an inspiration and a propaganda tool in their battle against the authoritarian government of Napoléon III. Throughout the 1850s, however, the United States was not acting much like a positive model: rapacious expansionism, slavery, and sectional frictions tarnished its image and diminished its usefulness. The Civil War marked a critical turning point: while the Emperor toyed with the idea of a joint Anglo-French recognition of the Confederacy and launched his ill-fated Mexican adventure, his opponents on the left feared the collapse of the great American experiment in popular government-the famous "proposition" voiced by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address. The Emancipation Proclamation, the Union victory, and Lincoln's martyrdom sparked a powerful burst of pro-Americanism on the French left that intensified in the final years of the Imperial regime. At no previous time had the American image been extolled so fervently by French liberals and progressives. As Sancton points out, however, the infatuation was short-lived. Following the Franco-Prussian War, the bloody suppression of the Commune, and the founding of the conservative Third Republic, the usefulness and relevance of the American example waned in the eyes of the French left. Meanwhile, the corruption, excesses, and vulgarity of Gilded Age America fed an increasingly negative image that laid the groundwork for the anti-Americanism that became a tenet of the French left in the 20th century. Among its original contributions to French and American scholarship on this period, Sancton's study explodes the widespread myth that French workers, despite the distress caused by the cotton famine, steadfastly supported the North during the Civil War out of a sense of solidarity with American slaves. On the contrary, most workers wanted the war to end as soon as possible, urged French government intervention, and many were favorable to the South. More broadly, his analysis shows how the American example, though useful to the left as a propaganda tool, was poorly understood and, in fact, ill-adapted to French republican traditions rooted in the Great Revolution. For all the ritual evocations of Lafayette and the "traditional Franco-American friendship," the two republics evolved in very different directions after 1871"--… (more)