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Sweet Land of Liberty - America in the Mind of the French Left, 1848-1871 (Hardcover)
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Sweet Land of Liberty - America in the Mind of the French Left, 1848-1871 (Hardcover)
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In Sweet Land of Liberty, Tom Sancton examines how the French left
perceived and used the image of the United States against the
backdrop of major historical developments in both countries between
the Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871. Along the
way, he weaves in the voices of scores of French
observers-including those of everyday French citizens as well as
those of prominent thinkers and politicians such as Alexis de
Tocqueville, Victor Hugo, and Georges Clemenceau-as they looked to
the democratic ideals of their American counterparts in the face of
rising authoritarianism on the European continent. Louis Napoleon's
bloody coup in December 1851 disbanded France's Second Republic and
ushered in an era of increased political oppression, effectively
forging together a disparate group of dissidents who embraced the
tradition of the French Revolution and advocated for popular
government. As they pursued their opposition to the Bonapartist
regime, the French left looked to the American example as both a
democratic model and a source of ideological support in favor of
political liberty. During the 1850s, however, the left grew
increasingly wary of the United States, as slavery, rapacious
expansionism, and sectional frictions tarnished its image and
diminished its usefulness. The Civil War, Sancton argues, marked a
critical turning point. While Napoleon III considered joint
Anglo-French recognition of the Confederacy and launched an
ill-fated invasion of Mexico, his opponents on the left feared the
collapse of the great American experiment in democracy and popular
government. The Emancipation Proclamation, the Union victory, and
Lincoln's assassination ignited powerful pro-American sentiment
among the French left that galvanized their opposition to the
imperial regime. After the fall of the Second Empire and the
founding of the conservative Third Republic in 1870, the relevance
of the American example waned. Moderate republicans no longer
needed the American model, while the more progressive left became
increasingly radicalized following the bloody repression of the
Commune in 1871. Sancton argues that the corruption and excesses of
Gilded Age America established the groundwork for the anti-American
fervor that came to characterize the French left throughout much of
the twentieth century. Sweet Land of Liberty counters the long-held
assumption that French workers, despite the distress caused by a
severe cotton famine in the South, steadfastly supported the North
during the Civil War out of a sense of solidarity with American
slaves and lofty ideas of liberty. On the contrary, many workers
backed the South, hoped for an end to fighting, and urged French
government intervention. More broadly, Sancton's analysis shows
that the American example, though useful to the left, proved
ill-adapted to French republican traditions rooted in the Great
Revolution of 1789. For all the ritual evocations of Lafayette and
the ""traditional Franco-American friendship,"" the two republics
evolved in disparate ways as each endured social turmoil and
political upheaval during the second half of the nineteenth
century.
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