One of the French newspapers recently tweeted a news story about a Russian politician claiming that Britain was Russia's eternal enemy. It was quite heartening to see lots of French people objecting; it was them, not the Russians that were our biggest enemy.
It’s quite touching to see Ed West’s emotional outbursts over France — or, more precisely, the idea of France! I share his love of France, though not the France of military pomp, and glory, but the France of dangerous, world-shaking ideas! (Sorry, Ed, we only live once.)
And yes, Macron is the “tragic hero” whose historical significance much of France has yet to appreciate!
On a much lighter note: I might do the same if they grant me a property/land plot in rural France, a steady supply of wine and cheese, and enough time to read Proust in French!
Although having openly gay soldiers is a sign of diversity, and diversity is a strength, so therefore, the Belgian army can’t shoot straight because it isn’t gay enough!
"tailing off after 1422 when the records dry up" I love these little patriotic fibs in your work. Please take good care of yourself during your Substack sabbatical.
Is it worth pointing out that our record as allies has been historically disastrous, specifically, for England/Britain?
Beginning with Wolsey's French Alliance at the time of the 1527 Treaty of Westminster which entailed the formal renunciation of historic English claims in France and saved France herself from permanent dismemberment after the Battle of Pavia but turned all Europe against us, all at once.
Then there was the tortuous and prolonged Stuart French infatuation with France which laid the roots of our civil war and resulted only in the Secret Treaty of Dover.
After that came Harley and Bolingbroke's latently treasonous Jacobite Tory administration of 1710–1714 which entirely threw away Marlborough's great victorys in Europe in order to sign the cringing and concessionary Treaty if Utrecht - abandoning the Dutch and giving Spain to the Bourbons for nothing.
The Anglo-French Alliance of 1716–1731 was another disaster for England costing us our commerce, the goodwill of all our natural allies and giving Louis XIV just enough breathing-space to rebuild in time for the Seven Years War.
Crimea and China were highly cynical strategic and moral failures on a grand scale, achieving precisely nothing, in the long term, for England while serving nicely as a downpayment on the Second French Empire.
Every time some 'bright spark' has thought up the 'French Alliance' again it has worked disastrously against England and very often against our direct national interest.
Lastly and most disastrously in the national Flodden which was the Great War, fought for and in France, for French ends, to a French plan. Need we discuss the unilateral surrender of the French Army in the Second World War, something they had solemnly sworn never to do?
The entire Highland division was abandoned at Valery in 1940 by their French comrades, who had thrown down their arms. The Division had been placed, in trust, under direct French military command. 10,000 Highlanders were given over to German captivity and servitude.
The periods of alliance were always hugely unpopular at home, ruinously expensive of both treasure and prestige abroad, and always attended by a more than a lingering sense that the French were cleverly using us for their own ends.
As the Age of Nations was gradually succeed by the Age of Ideas, Britain and France discovered they had more in common. No one likes an essay in the comments, but, that briefly, is why the two have not clashed since Waterloo.
The fall of Paris was not just a strategic disaster ( tho it was that). It was an outrage to an idea. Why were the troops of darkness marching through the City of Light? That sparked people as much as any material interest.
Re: Every time some 'bright spark' has thought up the 'French Alliance' again it has worked disastrously against England and very often against our direct national interest.
I think this can be expanded to a claim that any time Britain gets enmeshed in Continental affairs it has ended badly (with allowance for the fact that at times it was impossible not to get involved).
It is arguable but, equally, our alliances with the Dutch, the Danish, the Empire (Germans) and the Russians have usually been both glorious and profitable in equal measure - even if it is considered bad taste to say so these days.
The Battle of the Dunes (1658) was another Anglo-French venture which was a complete military success, and resulted in France replacing Spain as the No.1 power, greatly expanding it's territory, while England only gained Dunkirk (which was then sold to France).
Suez was a political fiasco but I believe an impressive military feat by the Anglo-French forces.
Nietzsche of all people considered the French the natural leaders of Europe because of their history, high culture (which Nietzsche liked) and fact that they are literally the only country in Europe whose mainland borders the North Sea and Mediterranean Sea. Hence , they had a perfect combination of the "North" and "South" of Europe in his mind.
"There is yet a third claim to superiority: in the French nature there exists a half-achieved synthesis of north and south which makes them understand many things and urges them to do many things which an Englishman will never understand. Their temperament, periodically turning towards the south and away from the south, in which the Provençal and Ligurian blood from time to time foams over, preserves them from dreary northern gray-on-gray and sunless concept-ghoulishness and anemia—the disease of our German taste against whose excess one has at just this moment very resolutely prescribed blood and iron [re Chancellor Otto von Bismarck], that is to say "grand politics" (in accordance with a dangerous therapeutic which has certainly taught me how to wait but has not yet taught me how to hope—). Even now one still encounters in France an advance understanding and accommodation of those rarer and rarely contented human beings who are too comprehensive to find satisfaction in any fatherlandishness and know how to love the south in the north and the north in the south—the born Midlanders, the "good Europeans."— It was for them that Bizet made music, this last genius to see a new beauty and seduction—who discovered a piece of the south of music."
Ive been to Paris for the last few days on my honeymoon, and this afternoon my wife insisted I ditch her to fulfill my wish to finally go to Hotel Invalides. Like Paris itself these days, the spirit is a breath of fresh air compared to London - it's continued reverence of the forces that after all, brought the French people freedom and riches. That is, literal force.
France has a lot of fundamental problems, but Gaullism survives to some extent (is on the rise again), and they seem for sure to be much less emotionally hostage to their own colonial past than the UK. Since France has its own brand of insane academics it seems to have missed being permeated by the worst of American progressiveness. The main issue remains anaemic growth and multiculturalism, but militant French republicanism might actually have a footing chance of providing a common platform?
It also seems to be the last country on earth that still really treasures high culture openly in society. All in the spirit of de Gaulle. We need the obstinate, insufferable, stubbornly idiosyncratic and irrationally self-proud France now more than ever so wishing them the best.
The idea of France lacking fighting spirit will be dissipated for anyone who cares to read about the battle of Stonne, in 1940. Poor military leadership is another matter, but the balls on those few men were huge.
‘Iraq disaster’? Oh well, that’s another subject. Didn’t do Saddam any good, tho.
The ‘special relationship’, properly understood, is just a recognition of shared ideas and interests. What you make of it depends on if you think ideas determine interests, or interests determine ideas.
On the frontier, you built up your neighbor, because his prosperity meant your prosperity. Assuming you had the same basic ideas about what’s right, and did not go in for raids, or rustling, or whatever.
In that understanding, a strong, prosperous, and independent United Kingdom is in the best interests of the USA.
"That country, of course, is France, which since the Battle of Waterloo has been Britain’s closest ally, a remarkable record of military co-operation considering that for the previous 130 years the two had done almost nothing but fight each other. France and England were also famously at war for long stretches of the Middle Ages, beginning in 1337 and then tailing off after 1422 when the records dry up."
The sheer number of conflicts between the late 17th and early 19th Centuries between Britain and France was so insanely large, many historians have called this period the Second Hundred Years War.
Ironically, the French language is seeing something of a comeback, mainly because former French West and Equatorial Africa are the most fecund in the world!:
In this reality, there is an earlier and even bloodier version of the Indian Mutiny in the 1800s due to the Pope proclaiming the Hindu faith to be a Heathen one and a Catholic power dominating the Subcontinent. The French retain their influence but are forced to a more hands-off approach than the OTL (our timeline) British Raj. The Subcontinent subsequently resembles a bunch of princely states. On the other hand, there is no overarching concept of Indian nationalism in this world to challenge the French (and nationalism as a meme overall is weaker due to the French Revolution being averted).
"Resistance has a powerful message: even when the odds seem overwhelming and hopeless, it’s never over. "
I find kind of fascinating the lesser known story of WWII where the Free French gradually retook (often remote) territories from the Vichy French over the course of the conflict. De Gaulle started out with just Equatorial Africa, French India (with the Raj next door, there wasn't much of a choice), New Caledonia, and French Polynesia. It's intriguing the tales of how they gradually retook all sorts of remote islands in conflicts most have never heard.
Few know for example that the first successful Allied amphibious invasion of the war was in Madagascar!
That the Germans should be protecting "European democracy" is a hilarious statement, Ed. You know well what the current German regime stands for, and it's not democracy.
Still, I share your admiration for France, especially la France profonde, as long as it lasts, which will not be long as things are going.
French scholarship in areas I know about is unsurpassed. I've just been re-reading one of Henri-Irénée Marrou's final works, "Décadence romaine ou Antiquité tardive, III-VIe siècle." He was a great scholar in the best French tradition, who was therefore marginalized after 1968.
I could also mention the great French political thinkers such as Raymond Aron, also no friend of the 68'ers, or his brilliant follower Alain Besançon.
And they repaid us when we joined the EEC by creating the common fisheries policy (which was only created when the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Norway applied to join the EEC.
"[T]hen tailing off after 1422 when the records dry up". Up to a point, Lord Copper. The conflict between France and England continued until the 7decisive battle of Castillion in 1453 (same year as the fall of Constantinople to Mehmet II's Ottomans (Turks, not furniture). Henry Vi, that tragically weak and mentally unstable king (see Charles VI of France five decades before, which also resulted in civil strife) was the only English monarch to crowned roi de France in Notre Dame in 1431, arguably the height of English control in France.
The death of John, duke of Bedford, and the king's oldest uncle, and Henry's assumption of full power (sporadic throughout his tumultuous reign) accelerated what was likely to be an inevitable decline in English fortunes, even more so with the abandonment by Burgundy of the English cause.
I would highly recommend Lord Sumption's magisterial histories of the Hundred Years War as the source of reference (though is views on Joan of Arc are refreshingly reactionary!).
One of the French newspapers recently tweeted a news story about a Russian politician claiming that Britain was Russia's eternal enemy. It was quite heartening to see lots of French people objecting; it was them, not the Russians that were our biggest enemy.
It’s quite touching to see Ed West’s emotional outbursts over France — or, more precisely, the idea of France! I share his love of France, though not the France of military pomp, and glory, but the France of dangerous, world-shaking ideas! (Sorry, Ed, we only live once.)
And yes, Macron is the “tragic hero” whose historical significance much of France has yet to appreciate!
I'm actually leaving substack to join the Foreign Legion.
Wow! Congrats Ed! This is a great honor!
On a much lighter note: I might do the same if they grant me a property/land plot in rural France, a steady supply of wine and cheese, and enough time to read Proust in French!
Beau West? What ho!
Whose anthem suggests that the Belgians are homosexuals. Bit unfair.
I think the meaning of the idiom ‘ce sont des tireurs au cul’ is more accurately given by a similar idiom in English ‘sorry ass shooters’.
Although having openly gay soldiers is a sign of diversity, and diversity is a strength, so therefore, the Belgian army can’t shoot straight because it isn’t gay enough!
Pasteur--world shaking, opposite of dangerous
Montesquieu -- very influential for the US, not dangerous
Montaigne -- shook some people's worlds, but not really dangerous
Descartes -- world shaking, made it to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, but now bores undergraduates
Abelard -- the original bad boy French Intellectual but paid for it -- ouch!
Villon -- see above
Fun fact: de Gaulle is actually a Flemish name and probably means "the wall".
"tailing off after 1422 when the records dry up" I love these little patriotic fibs in your work. Please take good care of yourself during your Substack sabbatical.
thank you!
(Edited)
Is it worth pointing out that our record as allies has been historically disastrous, specifically, for England/Britain?
Beginning with Wolsey's French Alliance at the time of the 1527 Treaty of Westminster which entailed the formal renunciation of historic English claims in France and saved France herself from permanent dismemberment after the Battle of Pavia but turned all Europe against us, all at once.
Then there was the tortuous and prolonged Stuart French infatuation with France which laid the roots of our civil war and resulted only in the Secret Treaty of Dover.
After that came Harley and Bolingbroke's latently treasonous Jacobite Tory administration of 1710–1714 which entirely threw away Marlborough's great victorys in Europe in order to sign the cringing and concessionary Treaty if Utrecht - abandoning the Dutch and giving Spain to the Bourbons for nothing.
The Anglo-French Alliance of 1716–1731 was another disaster for England costing us our commerce, the goodwill of all our natural allies and giving Louis XIV just enough breathing-space to rebuild in time for the Seven Years War.
Crimea and China were highly cynical strategic and moral failures on a grand scale, achieving precisely nothing, in the long term, for England while serving nicely as a downpayment on the Second French Empire.
Every time some 'bright spark' has thought up the 'French Alliance' again it has worked disastrously against England and very often against our direct national interest.
Lastly and most disastrously in the national Flodden which was the Great War, fought for and in France, for French ends, to a French plan. Need we discuss the unilateral surrender of the French Army in the Second World War, something they had solemnly sworn never to do?
The entire Highland division was abandoned at Valery in 1940 by their French comrades, who had thrown down their arms. The Division had been placed, in trust, under direct French military command. 10,000 Highlanders were given over to German captivity and servitude.
The periods of alliance were always hugely unpopular at home, ruinously expensive of both treasure and prestige abroad, and always attended by a more than a lingering sense that the French were cleverly using us for their own ends.
As the Age of Nations was gradually succeed by the Age of Ideas, Britain and France discovered they had more in common. No one likes an essay in the comments, but, that briefly, is why the two have not clashed since Waterloo.
The fall of Paris was not just a strategic disaster ( tho it was that). It was an outrage to an idea. Why were the troops of darkness marching through the City of Light? That sparked people as much as any material interest.
That has got me thinking, thank you!
Re: Every time some 'bright spark' has thought up the 'French Alliance' again it has worked disastrously against England and very often against our direct national interest.
I think this can be expanded to a claim that any time Britain gets enmeshed in Continental affairs it has ended badly (with allowance for the fact that at times it was impossible not to get involved).
It is arguable but, equally, our alliances with the Dutch, the Danish, the Empire (Germans) and the Russians have usually been both glorious and profitable in equal measure - even if it is considered bad taste to say so these days.
The Battle of the Dunes (1658) was another Anglo-French venture which was a complete military success, and resulted in France replacing Spain as the No.1 power, greatly expanding it's territory, while England only gained Dunkirk (which was then sold to France).
Suez was a political fiasco but I believe an impressive military feat by the Anglo-French forces.
Nietzsche of all people considered the French the natural leaders of Europe because of their history, high culture (which Nietzsche liked) and fact that they are literally the only country in Europe whose mainland borders the North Sea and Mediterranean Sea. Hence , they had a perfect combination of the "North" and "South" of Europe in his mind.
"There is yet a third claim to superiority: in the French nature there exists a half-achieved synthesis of north and south which makes them understand many things and urges them to do many things which an Englishman will never understand. Their temperament, periodically turning towards the south and away from the south, in which the Provençal and Ligurian blood from time to time foams over, preserves them from dreary northern gray-on-gray and sunless concept-ghoulishness and anemia—the disease of our German taste against whose excess one has at just this moment very resolutely prescribed blood and iron [re Chancellor Otto von Bismarck], that is to say "grand politics" (in accordance with a dangerous therapeutic which has certainly taught me how to wait but has not yet taught me how to hope—). Even now one still encounters in France an advance understanding and accommodation of those rarer and rarely contented human beings who are too comprehensive to find satisfaction in any fatherlandishness and know how to love the south in the north and the north in the south—the born Midlanders, the "good Europeans."— It was for them that Bizet made music, this last genius to see a new beauty and seduction—who discovered a piece of the south of music."
http://www.thenietzschechannel.com/works-pub/bge/bge8.htm
Yeah, France as the natural leaders of Europe is hardly an unreasonable idea.
Masterful and very timely article!
Ive been to Paris for the last few days on my honeymoon, and this afternoon my wife insisted I ditch her to fulfill my wish to finally go to Hotel Invalides. Like Paris itself these days, the spirit is a breath of fresh air compared to London - it's continued reverence of the forces that after all, brought the French people freedom and riches. That is, literal force.
France has a lot of fundamental problems, but Gaullism survives to some extent (is on the rise again), and they seem for sure to be much less emotionally hostage to their own colonial past than the UK. Since France has its own brand of insane academics it seems to have missed being permeated by the worst of American progressiveness. The main issue remains anaemic growth and multiculturalism, but militant French republicanism might actually have a footing chance of providing a common platform?
It also seems to be the last country on earth that still really treasures high culture openly in society. All in the spirit of de Gaulle. We need the obstinate, insufferable, stubbornly idiosyncratic and irrationally self-proud France now more than ever so wishing them the best.
The idea of France lacking fighting spirit will be dissipated for anyone who cares to read about the battle of Stonne, in 1940. Poor military leadership is another matter, but the balls on those few men were huge.
It may be over 200 years since we and France fought on different sides, but they have not been a reliable ally throughout that time.
Palmerston's Folly of the forts built above Portsmouth in the 1860s betray a lack of faith in Napoleon III's motives.
And weren't the French the prime movers (along with the unelected EU Commission) of the punishment beating we received for Brexit?
‘Iraq disaster’? Oh well, that’s another subject. Didn’t do Saddam any good, tho.
The ‘special relationship’, properly understood, is just a recognition of shared ideas and interests. What you make of it depends on if you think ideas determine interests, or interests determine ideas.
On the frontier, you built up your neighbor, because his prosperity meant your prosperity. Assuming you had the same basic ideas about what’s right, and did not go in for raids, or rustling, or whatever.
In that understanding, a strong, prosperous, and independent United Kingdom is in the best interests of the USA.
"That country, of course, is France, which since the Battle of Waterloo has been Britain’s closest ally, a remarkable record of military co-operation considering that for the previous 130 years the two had done almost nothing but fight each other. France and England were also famously at war for long stretches of the Middle Ages, beginning in 1337 and then tailing off after 1422 when the records dry up."
The sheer number of conflicts between the late 17th and early 19th Centuries between Britain and France was so insanely large, many historians have called this period the Second Hundred Years War.
Ironically, the French language is seeing something of a comeback, mainly because former French West and Equatorial Africa are the most fecund in the world!:
https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20260320-french-overtakes-arabic-to-become-world-fourth-most-spoken-language
wonder how long before they switch to English? it's seen sharp retreats in Algeria and Lebanon for instance
Or Russian for that matter:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PGTYuFNv-fE&pp=ygUQUnVzc2lhIGNvdXAgYmVsdNIHCQn-CwGHKiGM7w%3D%3D
One can only wonder what the world would look like today had the French won the Indian Subcontinent:
https://www.clockworksky.net/cliveless_world/ah_cliveless_top.html
Or, for my money the most intriguing counterfactual, what if the Huguenots had been expelled to New France? Geneva on the St. Laurence?
A fascinating question: French and Indian arrogance rolled into one!
In this reality, there is an earlier and even bloodier version of the Indian Mutiny in the 1800s due to the Pope proclaiming the Hindu faith to be a Heathen one and a Catholic power dominating the Subcontinent. The French retain their influence but are forced to a more hands-off approach than the OTL (our timeline) British Raj. The Subcontinent subsequently resembles a bunch of princely states. On the other hand, there is no overarching concept of Indian nationalism in this world to challenge the French (and nationalism as a meme overall is weaker due to the French Revolution being averted).
"Resistance has a powerful message: even when the odds seem overwhelming and hopeless, it’s never over. "
I find kind of fascinating the lesser known story of WWII where the Free French gradually retook (often remote) territories from the Vichy French over the course of the conflict. De Gaulle started out with just Equatorial Africa, French India (with the Raj next door, there wasn't much of a choice), New Caledonia, and French Polynesia. It's intriguing the tales of how they gradually retook all sorts of remote islands in conflicts most have never heard.
Few know for example that the first successful Allied amphibious invasion of the war was in Madagascar!
That the Germans should be protecting "European democracy" is a hilarious statement, Ed. You know well what the current German regime stands for, and it's not democracy.
Still, I share your admiration for France, especially la France profonde, as long as it lasts, which will not be long as things are going.
French scholarship in areas I know about is unsurpassed. I've just been re-reading one of Henri-Irénée Marrou's final works, "Décadence romaine ou Antiquité tardive, III-VIe siècle." He was a great scholar in the best French tradition, who was therefore marginalized after 1968.
I could also mention the great French political thinkers such as Raymond Aron, also no friend of the 68'ers, or his brilliant follower Alain Besançon.
We'll miss you.
And they repaid us when we joined the EEC by creating the common fisheries policy (which was only created when the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Norway applied to join the EEC.
well, de Gaulle had a thing or two to say about that...
"[T]hen tailing off after 1422 when the records dry up". Up to a point, Lord Copper. The conflict between France and England continued until the 7decisive battle of Castillion in 1453 (same year as the fall of Constantinople to Mehmet II's Ottomans (Turks, not furniture). Henry Vi, that tragically weak and mentally unstable king (see Charles VI of France five decades before, which also resulted in civil strife) was the only English monarch to crowned roi de France in Notre Dame in 1431, arguably the height of English control in France.
The death of John, duke of Bedford, and the king's oldest uncle, and Henry's assumption of full power (sporadic throughout his tumultuous reign) accelerated what was likely to be an inevitable decline in English fortunes, even more so with the abandonment by Burgundy of the English cause.
I would highly recommend Lord Sumption's magisterial histories of the Hundred Years War as the source of reference (though is views on Joan of Arc are refreshingly reactionary!).