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The View from Paris: ‘Latinity’, ‘Anglo-Saxonism’, and the Americas, as discussed in the Revue des Races Latines , 1857–64

2011; Routledge; Volume: 33; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Francês

10.1080/07075332.2011.620738

1949-6540

Maike Thier,

European Political History Analysis

Abstract This article analyses the construction of concepts of 'Latinity' and 'Anglo-Saxonism' in the context of French debates on the Americas in the 1850s and 1860s. It argues that this imperialist narrative, developed against the backdrop of the French intervention in Mexico and the US Civil War, is pertinent to an understanding of the cultural system of representation of empire more generally. Paying particular attention to the Revue des Races Latines (1857–64), which promoted the idea of the Americas as the central battlefield of a more global struggle between Latin and Anglo-Saxon 'races' especially forcefully, it contends that the supposedly transnational concept of 'Latinity' came to define nationalist aims and to underpin imperialist visions about France's role in the world. Keywords: FranceFrench EmpireUnited StatesMexicoLatin AmericaUS Civil Warnineteenth centurytransnational historyimperialismcultural historyLatinityAnglo-Saxonism Notes 1. G. Bude, S. Conrad and O. Janz (eds), Transnationale Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien (Göttingen, 2006); A. Iriye and P.-Y. Saunier (eds), The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (Basingstoke, 2009). 2. C.A. Bayly, et al., 'On Transnational History', American Historical Review, cxi (2006), 1440–64. 3. M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (2nd edn, London, 2008). 4. Ibid., 3. 5. D. Todd, 'A French Imperial Meridian, 1814–1870', Past and Present, ccx (2011), 155–86. 6. Ibid., 177. 7. Ibid., 180. 8. T. Schoonover, 'France in Central America, 1820s–1920s', Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, lxxix (1992), 161–97; R. Aldrich, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion (Basingstoke, 1996), 94–96. 9. P. Larousse, Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIXe siècle (Paris, 1866–76). 10. M. Thier, ''Paris en Amérique': French Images of the United States, ca. 1848-ca. 1886', (Ph.D. dissertation, University College London, 2009). 11. D. Lacorne, J. Rupnik and M.-F. Toinet (eds), The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism: A Century of French Perception (Basingstoke, 1990); P. Roger, L'ennemi américain: généalogie de l'antiaméricanisme français (Paris, 2002). 12. An example is this comedy of manners: V. Sardou, L'Oncle Sam (Paris, 1875). 13. Founded as the Revue Espagnole et Portugaise at the beginning of 1857, it changed its name to Revue Espagnole, Portugaise, Brésilienne et Hispano-Américaine in June of that year and finally to Revue des Races Latines (Française, Espagnole, Italienne, Portugaise, Belge, Autrichienne, Brésilienne et Hispano-Américaine) in May 1858. Irrespective of these changes of title at different points in time, I will henceforth refer to the Revue des Races Latines (RRL). At its high point in the early 1860s, it had up to 3,000 subscribers. 14. G. Hugelman, 'A nos lecteurs', RRL, June 1857, vol. 3, no. 9, 8. 15. B. A. Morel, Traité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l'espèce humaine et des causes qui produisent ces variétés maladives (Paris, 1857); K. W. Swart, The Sense of Decadence in Nineteenth-Century France (The Hague, 1964) 16. R. J. C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London, 1995), 54. 17. T. Todorov, Nous et les autres: la réflexion française sur la diversité humaine (Paris, 1989); idem, '"Race", Writing and Culture', Critical Inquiry, xiii (1986), 171–81. 18. H. Taine, Histoire de la littérature anglaise (Paris, 1863), i. xxv. 19. C. Nicolet, La fabrique d'une nation: La France entre Rome et les Germains (Paris, 2006), 107–38; M. Seliger, 'Race-Thinking during the Restoration', Journal of the History of Ideas, xix (1958), 273–82; M. Thom, 'Tribes within Nations: The Ancient Germans and the History of Modern France', in H. K. Bhahba (ed), Nation and Narration (London, 1990), 23–43. 20. A. de Gobineau, Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines (Paris, 1853–55). 21. Incidentally, Gobineau's old friend, Alexis de Tocqueville, was among the harshest critics of this work: Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life (New Haven, 2006), 545–6. 22. J. W. Ceaser, Reconstructing America: The Symbol of America in Modern Thought (New Haven, 1997), 87–105 (esp. 102). 23. H. de Ferron, Théorie du progrès (Rennes, 1867). See also K. W. Swart, The Sense of Decadence in Nineteenth-Century France (The Hague, 1964), 96–97. 24. On the effects of this belief in climatology for the French imperial project see E. T. Jennings, Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas (Durham, 2006). 25. In general, little work has been done on the concept of 'Latinity' and its uses in political discourses. A notable exception is K. Panick, La race latine. Politischer Romanismus im Frankreich des 19. Jahrhunderts (Bonn, 1978). 26. For a general introduction see J. Portes, 'L'épreuve de l'étranger', in Jean-François Sirinelli (ed), Histoire des Droites en France, vol. 3 Sensibilités (Paris, 1992), iii. 165–208; T. Zeldin, A History of French Passions, vol. 2 Intellect, Taste and Anxiety (Oxford, 1993), ii. 86–138. Specific studies: C. Digeon, La crise allemande de la pensée française, 1870–1914 (Paris, 1959); M. E. Nolan, The Inverted Mirror: Mythologising the Enemy in France and Germany, 1898–1914 (New York, 2005); R. Tombs and I. Tombs, That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present (London, 2006). 27. Flaubert to Mme Regnier, 11 March 1871 in G. Flaubert, Correspondance (Paris: Charpentier, 1893), iv. 44. 28. Louis-Xavier de Ricard, Le Féderalisme (Paris, 1877). 29. A. Pitt, 'A Changing Anglo-Saxon Myth: Its Development and Function in French Political Thought, 1860–1914', French History, xiv (2000), 150–73 (esp. 153). 30. Roger, L'ennemi américain. 31. M. Chevalier, L'expédition du Mexique (Paris, 1862); G.-A. Dugast, La tentation mexicaine en France au XIXe siècle: l'image du Mexique et l'intervention française, 1821–1862 (Paris, 2008); M. Cunningham, Mexico and the Foreign Policy of Napoleon III (Basingstoke, 2001). See also N. Nichols Barker, The French Experience in Mexico, 1821–1861: A History of Constant Misunderstanding (Chapel Hill, 1979). 32. Thier, 'French Images of the United States', 89–131; S. Gavronsky, The French Liberal Opposition and the American Civil War (New York, 1968). 33. L. M. Case (ed), French Opinion on the United States and Mexico, 1860–1867: Extracts from the Reports of the Procureurs Généraux (Hamden, CT, 1969), 309–435. 34. A. Mercier, Du Panlatinisme (Paris, 1863), 9–10. 35. A. Legoyt, L'émigration européenne: son importance, ses causes, ses effets (Paris, 1861), 123. 36. M. K. Matsuda, Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific (New York, 2005), 43–67. This was a long-standing interest: N.-L. Bonaparte, Canal of Nicaragua, or a Project to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by Means of a Canal (London, 1846). See also this 'open letter' to the Emperor pushing for greater French involvement in the region: Lettre à Sa Majesté l'Empereur Napoléon III sur l'influence française en Amérique à propos du message de M. Buchanan par un homme de la race latine (Paris, 1858). 37. Bigelow to Seward, 30 Nov. 1865 [New York, New York Public Library, Archives and Manuscripts Division], John Bigelow Papers [MssCol 301], Consular Correspondence and Papers, vol. 12. 38. 'Rassegna Politica', Nuova Antologica, Aug. 1867, vol. II, no. 8, 840. I thank Axel Körner for sharing this reference with me. 39. Madame de Staël, De l'Allemagne (Paris, 1968), 45. 40. M. Chevalier, Lettres sur l'Amérique du Nord (Paris, 1836), i. x. On Chevalier, see M. Drolet, 'Industry, Class and Society: a Historiographic Reinterpretation of Michel Chevalier', English Historical Review, cxxiii (2008), 1229–71. 41. Todd, 'A French Imperial Meridian', 176. 42. W. D. Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America (London, 2005), 59. 43. F. Ibold, 'Die Erfindung Lateinamerikas: Die Idee der Latinité im Frankreich des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Eigenwahrnehmung des Südlichen Amerika', in H.-J. König and S. Rinke (eds), Transatlantische Perzeptionen: Lateinamerika – USA – Europa (Stuttgart, 1998), 77–91; A. McGuinness, 'Searching For "Latin America": Race and Sovereignty in the Americas in the 1850s', in N. P. Appelbaum, A. S. Macpherson and K. Alejandra Rosemblatt (eds), Race and Nation in Modern Latin America (Chapel Hill, 2003), 87–107; A. Ardao, América latina y la latinidad (Mexico City, 1993). 44. Chevalier, L'expédition du Mexique. 45. C. Clark and J. Wright, 'Regionalism and the State in France and in Prussia', European Review of History/Revue Européenne d'histoire, xv (2008), 277–93 (esp. 280). See also J. Wright, The Regionalist Movement in France: Jean-Charles Brun and French Political Thought (Oxford, 2003); A.-M. Thiesse, Ecrire la France: le mouvement littéraire régionaliste de la langue française entre la Belle Epoque et la Libération (Paris, 1991); Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven, 1994), 166–213. 46. L. Einaudi, Money and Politics: European Monetary Unification and the International Gold Standard, 1865–1873 (Oxford, 2001), 37. 47. E. Laboulaye, 'Preface', in J.-F. Astié, Histoire de la République des États-Unis depuis l'établissement des premières colonies jusqu'à l'élection du Président Lincoln (1620–1860) (Paris, 1865), i. x. 48. Thier, 'French Images of the United States', 128. 49. Quoted in T.A. Sancton, 'America in the Eyes of the French Left, 1848–1871', (D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1979), 22. 50. Quoted in Bigelow to Seward, 21 Nov. 1865, John Bigelow Papers, Consular Correspondence and Papers, vol. 12. 51. H. Guillemin, Lamartine (Paris, 1987), 164. 52. Le Constitutionnel, 5 June 1852. 53. Swart, Sense of Decadence, xi. 54. A. de Grandeffe, L'Empire d'Occident reconstitué ou l'équilibre européen assuré par l'union des races latines (Paris, 1857), 12. 55. P. Ory, 'From Baudelaire to Duhamel: An Unlikely Antipathy', in Lacorne, Rupnik and Toinet, Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism, 42–54 (esp. 42). 56. E. Quinet, L'expédition du Mexique (Veytaux, 1862), 5–6. 57. E. Témime, 'Un journaliste d'affaires: Gabriel Hugelmann, propagandiste au service de Napoléon III et homme de confiance de Thiers', Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, xviii (1971), 610–29. 58. Ibid., 617. 59. Panick, La race latine, 176; Témime, 'Un journaliste d'affaires', 617. 60. G. Hugelmann, 'A nos lecteurs', RRL, July 1858, vol. 9, no. 25, 5–6 (esp. 6). 61. L.-M. Tisserand, 'Situation de la Latinité', RRL, Sept. 1860, vol. 22, no. 51, 161–75 (esp. 162). 62. G. Hugelmann, 'Introduction', RRL, Feb. 1857, vol. 1, no. 1, 5. It is, of course, also worth to bear in mind Emperess Eugénie's Spanish origins: J. Autin, L'Impératrice Eugénie ou l'empire d'une femme (Paris, 1990). 63. G. Hugelmann, 'Discours sur l'histoire', RRL, Feb. 1857, vol. 1, no. 1, 44. See also the more general discussion of different people's (or 'race's') artistic aptitudes on the occasion of the World Exhibition in London: A. d'Aveline, 'La Latinité à l'Exposition universelle à Londres', RRL, Aug. 1862, vol. 33, no. 74, 448–66; and for the second part RRL, Sept. 1862, vol. 35, no. 1, 115–30. 64. G. Hugelmann, 'Nos intentions', RRL, May 1858, vol. 8, no. 23, 5. 65. A. Lebailly, 'Les idiomes et les nationalités: les poètes de la Provence et du soleil: Frédéric Mistral', RRL, Oct. 1862, vol. 34, no. 76, 337–51. 66. See RRL, vol. 2, No. 8, June 1857, 668–77; A. Aumont, 'Histoire de l'Ile du Cuba', RRL, March 1858, vol. 7, no. 21, 29–80. 67. A. Hernandez, 'Courrier de l'Amérique du Sud' RRL, vol. 7, no. 21, March 1858, 247–76. 68. E. Muller, 'Histoire du Mexique', RRL, May 1858, vol. 8, no. 23, 56–118 (esp. 116). 69. A. Moure, 'Amérique du Sud, Brésil, Colonisation. Avis important aux émigrants', RRL, May 1857, vol. 2, no. 6, 293–303. 70. G. Hugelmann, 'A nos abonnés', RRL, Nov. 1857, vol. 5, no. 17, 2. 71. Témime, 'Un journaliste d'affaires', 619–20. 72. T. Casaubon, 'Amérique centrale', RRL, Sept. 1857, vol. 4, no. 15, 439–448 (esp. 439). On Britain's 'informal empire' in the region see M. Brown (ed), Informal Empire in Latin America: Culture, Commerce and Capital (London, 2008). 73. Aumont, 'Histoire de l'Ile du Cuba', 72. 74. 'Les œuvres de la race latine: le canal maritime de Suez', RRL, Dec. 1858, vol. 11, no. 30, 321–43. 75. R. Hulin, 'Chronique Algérienne', RRL, Jan. 1859, vol. 12, no. 31, 60–74 (esp. 66). 76. See for example the list of subscribers at the end of RRL, July 1862, vol. 33, no. 73, which includes more than 2,000 subscribers from Bordeaux. 77. R. Girardet, L'idée coloniale en France, 1871–1962 (Paris, 1972), 10–11. See also: H. Bonin, C. Hodeir and J.-F. Klein (eds), L'Esprit économique impérial (1830–1970): groupes de pression et réseaux du patronat colonial en France et dans l'empire (Paris, 2008). 78. G. Hugelmann, 'Avis important', RRL, May 1857, vol. 2, no. 6, 181. 79. Quoted in G. Hugelmann, 'A nos lecteurs', RRL, March 1859, vol. 13, no. 33, 19–20. 80. Hernandez, 'Courrier de l'Amérique du Sud', 247. 81. G. Hugelmann, 'Nos intentions', RRL, May 1858, vol. 8, no. 23, 17. 82. Quinet, L'expédition du Mexique, 4–5. 83. Ibid., 6. 84. Ibid., 3. 85. L.-M. Tisserand, 'Situation de la Latinité', RRL, June 1861, vol. 26, no. 60, 472–486 (479). 86. A. Peladan, 'Question américaine', RRL, Sept. 1861, vol. 28, no. 63, 330–3 (esp. 332). 87. L.-M. Tisserand, 'Situation de la Latinité', RRL, Dec. 1861, vol. 29, no. 66, 461–73 (esp. 471). 88. Ibid., 472. 89. Quinet, L'expédition du Mexique, 14. 90. Ibid., 15. 91. E. de Leon, 'La vérité sur les états confédérés d'Amérique', RRL, Sept. 1863, vol. 40, no. 86, 305–15. On the activities of Leon in Europe see H. Blumenthal, A Reappraisal of Franco-American Relations, 1830–1871 (Chapel Hill, 1959), 132–4; C.P. Cullop, 'Edwin de Leon, Jefferson Davis's Propagandist', Civil War History, viii (1962), 386–400. 92. L.-M. Tisserand, 'Situation de la race latine', RRL, Sept. 1860, vol. 22, no. 51, 161–75 (esp. 161–2). 93. L.-M. Tisserand, 'Le Libéralisme à l'Académie', RRL, Feb. 1861, vol. 24, no. 56, 346–78 (esp. 350). 94. Ibid., 375. 95. M. Taillar, 'Des lois historiques ou providentielles qui régissent les nations et le genre humain', RRL, July 1861, vol. 27, no. 61, 5–75 (esp. 75). 96. G. Hugelmann, 'La Quatrième Race', RRL, March-April 1863, vol. 37, no. 81/82, 70–316 (esp. 315). 97. U. Deschartes, 'Les intérêts latins au Orient', RRL, Aug. 1860, vol. 21, no. 50, 498–506 (498). 98. Ibid., 498. 99. G. Hugelmann, 'L'Empereur de l'Autriche', RRL, Feb. 1860, vol. 18, no. 44, 486–502 (esp. 486). 100. Todd, 'A French Imperial Meridian', 180–1. On the continuing importance of religious actors in the French Empire see J. P. Daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880–1914 (Oxford, 2006). 101. G. Hugelmann, 'A nos intentions', RRL, May 1858, vol. 8, no. 23, 11–12. See also C. Clark, 'The New Catholicism', in C. Clark and W. Kaiser (eds), Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, 2003), 11–46. 102. G. Hugelmann 'Parlez, ô vieille cathédrale !', RRL, Oct. 1858, vol. 10, no. 28, 347–50 (esp. 348). See also the series by J.-B. Larocque, 'Qu'est venu faire le protestantisme?', RRL, June 1858, vol. 8, no. 24, 440–60 and RRL, Oct. 1858, vol. 10, no. 28, 482–501. 103. G. Hugelmann and A. Lebaudy, 'La Compagnie d'Orléans et le Service Transatlantique', RRL, Dec. 1959, vol. 17, no. 42, 339–70 (esp. 340). 104. U. Deschartes, 'Des races et de leur mission', RRL, March 1860, vol. 19, no. 45, 22. 105. Hugelmann and Lebaudy, 'La Compagnie d'Orléans et le Service Transatlantique', 341. 106. Ibid., 341. 107. Témime, 'Un journaliste d'affaires', 620–2. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMaike ThierI would like to thank Kate Ferris, Jacques Revel, Antonella Romano, Bernhard Struck, and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am also grateful to David Todd for making available a pre-publication article.