Origins of Anti-French Animus Among English

Most cultural stereotypes have deep cultural roots with significant history, often founded in myth and conflict, and are enormously difficult to erode.

Unlike our neighbours to the south who operate on a melting-pot model, we have the unique challenge of not only tolerating our French minority, but supporting it and ensuring the survival of its culture and language. Doing so would require overcoming historical stereotypes towards the French.

Roman des Frances by Andrew de Coutances, a Medieval-era anti-French poem

David Crouch, a professor of medieval history at Hull University, recently translated a 396-line English poem called “Roman des Frances.” It’s dated between 1180 and 1194 CE, and might be one of the earliest examples of anti-French sentiment.

The author of the poem, Andrew de Coutances, was an Anglo-Norman cleric who refers to the French as godless, arrogant, lazy dogs, cowardly, heretics and rapists. It’s no surprise that the poem also coincides with conflicts between the English and the French, not long before the French conquest of Normandy in 1204.

It may also be one of the earliest pieces of anti-French propaganda, as racial rhetoric played an important role in creating support for the war.

Canada has it’s own history in racial rhetoric during conflict. Arguably we actively engage in it even today, as elaborated in my working paper with Daniel Simard, Media Narratives in Times of Turmoil: Depictions of Minorities in Canada Post 9/11.

The Telegraph offers an excerpt from Roman des Frances:

On King Arthur leading the English against France
Arthur besieged Paris, doubt it not at all!
He had a large force of
Well trained and equipped knights,
So he fiercely attacked the city.
The English went on the attack,
And the French defended like cowards,
They gave up at the first onset
And shamefully ran away.
It was from this flight [partir] that
Paris got its name, there is no concealing it,
Originally the place was called Thermes
And was indeed very famous.

On France’s humiliation
Arthur took homage from the French
And he established as a release-payment
A four-pence charge for being a peasant
To be paid as their poll tax.
People remind them often enough about
This source of shame, but they may as well not have bothered;
For they take neither offence or account,
As they know no shame.

Such a Frenchman as does value virtue and honour
Will not like it of course,
But so far as he is the more ashamed
He will boast twice as much
So know that, wherever you go,
Believe a Frenchman not at all;
Seek indeed and you shall find
But you find no prowess if there’s none to be had.

On French culinary habits
A man who dines with the French
Should grab whatever he may
As either he will end up with nuts
Or will just carry off the shallots
A Frenchman would need to own the world
To live as well as he would like.

Because that is something that cannot happen
The French know to hold what provisions they have.
That’s the way they are in their own land
But when they’re abroad they’re even more greedy
And shamefully gorge themselves at every table
Whenever they get near one.

And whenever hosts have them in their homes
They realise the French are such men
So greedy and so avaricious
That he ought to drive them off with kicks.