Free The French Way by Richard F. Kuisel

PREFACE
    By the end of the twentieth century America was the object of French fascination, anxiety, and scorn. If the New World had been observed by the French since Jacques cartier's explorations of the st. Lawrence River in the 1530s, it was not until over four hundred years later that America became the foil for national identity. By the 1980s America had become the standard by which the French measured their progress or decline. success in foreign affairs meant acting as the partner of the United states yet keeping a comfortable distance and counterbalancing the U.s. government's hegemony. The “good society” was defined by rejecting mainstream American notions of work and leisure. similarly, a modern economy did not imitate the “wild capitalism” of the United states; if some borrowing of American practice was necessary, it had to be adapted or repackaged as French. And culture, the nation's pride, needed to be protected against the onslaught of Hollywood movies, American English, and fast food. Viewed from France, the United states was engaged in a transatlantic competition whose stakes were national identity, independence, and prestige. Viewed from the United states, France was of little account except when it got in the way. It was an asymmetrical rivalry.
    This study examines how, why, and with what consequences America served as a foil for France in the final two decades of the twentieth century. It is the story of France's effort at designing its own pathto modernity, a path that moved at a tangent from the one represented by America.
    Perceiving America as a model to be emulated or avoided did not start during the most recent fin de siecle. Beginning as early as the eighteenth century, travelers, intellectuals, journalists, and others observed and commented on transatlantic developments creating a veritable “discourse,” much of which was anti-American. The tempo of commentary accelerated between the two world wars, but it was only after 1945 with the advent of the United States as a superpower, an economic-social model, and a cultural juggernaut that America came to be a major concern of policy makers and the public alike. Nevertheless, one would not say that the French in the early postwar decades were yet obsessed with America. They were not yet persuaded that America represented a form of modernity that had to be reckoned with and countered. French businessmen, for example, who visited the United States as guests of the Marshall Plan, were unconvinced that they either could, or should, try to transfer what they observed in American factories, offices, and shops. Similarly, French filmmakers and directors believed they could make movies as they did before the war and hold their own against Hollywood—if only they had adequate government assistance. And engineers and scientists were confident they could develop high-technology sectors like high-speed trains, nuclear energy, and even nuclear weapons without the Americans. After 1958 President Charles de Gaulle thought the French could move ahead without depending on American investments and without knowing English. As late as the 1960s many intellectuals believed America was irrelevant and could be ignored.
    By the final decades of the century, however, America could no longer be kept at a distance and it had become a pressing issue of both public concern and government policy. The allure of the model and anxiety about its power had escalated beyond any previous level: America had become a national fixation.
    It is my principal task to examine how the French perceived America, why they came to measure themselves against the Americans,and how they designed policies in response to this model in the final decades of the century. This inquiry leads to the larger question of whether or not they found a divergent “French path” to modernity in contrast to that of the American way. Had the French, by the end of the century, charted a distinctive and viable