European disdain for America
Simon Schama, in an excellent essay on the long history of transatlantic disdain, relays this comment from Frances Trollope, a British woman who traveled in the US in the 19th century: “If the citizens of the United States were indeed the devoted patriots they call themselves, they would surely not thus encrust themselves in the hard, dry, stubborn persuasion, that they are the first and best of the human race, that nothing is to be learnt, but what they are able to teach, and that nothing is worth having, which they do not possess.”
Many of the 19th century observations of America -- poor dinner conversations, the cultural poverty of American provincial life, the energy, the capable women -- still hold. Above all, American sanctimoniousness is a constant, and it has always irritated outsiders. It was, and is, almost as annoying as the French version: the pompous belief in France's worldwide mission civilatrice.
Why are they so alike? A nation based on a value system -- as are the US and France -- has qualities. Both France and the US are more open to outsiders than ethnocentric states. The French establishment has always loved those Africans who read Voltaire in the original. But the presumption of superior values, upon which both countries are founded, is as narrow-minded in its way as a traditional assertion of ethnic superiority. In their current squabble, France and the US deserve eachother. The unloved American [Simon Schama in the New Yorker]
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