Liberté? Egalité? Fraternité? Or just plain gall? In this provocative and brilliantly researched history of how the French have dealt with the United States, John J. Miller and Mark Molesky demonstrate that the cherished idea of French friendship has little basis in reality. Despite the myth of the “sister republics,” the French have always been our rivals, and have harmed and obstructed our interests more often than not. This history of French hostility goes back to 1704, when a group of French and Indians massacred American settlers in Deerfield, Massachusetts. The authors also debunk the myth of French aid during the Revolution: contrary to popular notions, the French did not enter the war until very late and were mainly interested in hurting their rivals, the British. After the war, the French continued to see themselves as major players in the Western hemisphere and shaped their policies to limit the growth and power of the new nation. The notorious XYZ affair, involving French efforts to undermine the government of George Washington, led to an undeclared naval war with France in 1798. During the Civil War, the French supported the Confederacy and installed a puppet emperor in Mexico. In the twentieth century, Americans clashed with the French repreatedly. The French victory over President Wilson at Versailles imposed a short-sighted and punitive settlement on Germany that paved the way for the rise of fascism in the 1930s. During World War II, Vichy French troops killed hundreds of American soldiers in North Africa, and diehard French fascist units fought against the Allies in the rubble of Berlin. During the Cold War, Charles DeGaulle yanked France out of NATO and obstructed our efforts to roll back Soviet expansion. The legacy of French imperial power has been no less disastrous. The French left Haiti in a shambles, got us into Vietnam, and educated many of the world’s worst tyrants at their elite universities, including Pol Pot, the genocidal Cambodian dictator. The fascist Baath regimes in Iraq and Syria are another legacy of failed French colonialism. Americans have been particularly irritated by French cultural arrogance—their crusades against American movies, McDonalds, Disney, and the exclusion of American words from their language have always rubbed us the wrong way. This irritation has now blossomed into outrage. Our Oldest Enemy shows why that outrage is justified.

"On All Saints Day of 1755, the tremors from a magnitude 8.5 earthquake swept furiously from its epicenter in the Atlantic Ocean toward the Iberian Peninsula. Nowhere was it felt more than in Lisbon, then the thriving capital of a great global empire. In a few minutes most of Lisbon was destroyed--but that was only the beginning. A tsunami swept away most of the ruined coast along the Tagus River and carried untold souls out to sea. When fire broke out across the city, the surviving Lisboetas were subject to a firestorm reaching temperatures over 1,832 degrees. Drawing on a wealth of new sources, on modern science (geology did not exist then), and on a sophisticated grasp of Portuguese history, Molesky gives us the definitive account of the destruction, of history's first international relief effort, and of the dampening effects these events had on the optimistic spirit of the Enlightenment"--Provided by pulisher.

Les mauvaises relations franco-américaines relèvent-elles du malentendu ou du désastre historique ? John J. Miller, journaliste à la National Review, et Mark Molesky, docteur en histoire de l'université de Harvard et maître de conférences à l'université de Seton Hall, sont formels : la France est l'ennemie de toujours de l'Amérique. Leur relation détestable, qui a connu son apogée pendant la crise irakienne, date d'avant la guerre d'Indépendance avec l'encouragement aux soulèvements indiens. Elle se poursuit avec la tentative de Napoléon III d'instaurer au Mexique un régime déstabilisant pour la jeune démocratie voisine. On la mesure tout au long de l'histoire avec le soutien de la France aux despotes hostiles à l'Amérique, formés pour certains dans les meilleures universités françaises. Pris très au sérieux outre-atlantique, où il a connu un succès retentissant, ce pamphlet, publié par la prestigieuse maison d'édition new-yorkaise Doubleday, reprend les idées les plus extrêmes des néoconservateurs américains : hostilité à la Révolution française, une des plus sanglantes de l'histoire, négation de la Résistance, réduite à un groupuscule d'aventuriers à la solde du communisme, rejet du général de Gaulle, " antiaméricain primaire " et de son disciple, Jacques Chirac. Partiale, polémique, politique, cette histoire tumultueuse de trois siècles d'amour-haine a fait un triomphe aux Etats-Unis. Elle éclaire aussi d'un jour nouveau les sentiments de nos " meilleurs amis ".