Thomas Kaiser on the Perfidy of Albion: French Perceptions Of

Norman Hampson. The Perfidy of Albion: French Perceptions of England during the French Revolution. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. xiii + 181 pp. $59.95 US, cloth, ISBN 978-0-312-21357-2. Reviewed by Thomas E. Kaiser Published on H-France (March, 1999) After being relegated to the sidelines for the A veteran historian of eighteenth-century past seventy-five years, the feld of international French politics and culture, Norman Hampson relations is once again attracting the attention of has taken a methodologically modest step in the eighteenth-century French historians, one of direction of the new study of foreign relations in whom has gone so far as to endorse the ancient this short work, which focuses primarily on credo regarding "the primacy of foreign policy."[1] French perceptions of Britain and secondarily on Like many other revivals of once thriving and British perceptions of France during the Revolu‐ then rather neglected areas of history, this one in‐ tionary decade. While the author's chosen topic volves no mere return of the repressed. Rather, it puts him in the universe of innovators, the work has led to the study of matters which, though not is conspicuous for the absence of attention to "dis‐ altogether neglected by past masters like Albert course" and for the relatively narrow approach Sorel, were ignored in most earlier approaches to Hampson takes to the study of public opinion, the subject. In particular, the newer histories of which relies mostly upon the writings and speech‐ foreign relations have sought to infuse the study es of major authors and Revolutionary leaders. It of diplomatic exchanges, treaties, alliances, wars, is narrow, too, in that the author deals almost ex‐ and other venerable targets of historical inquiry clusively with perceptions of British and French with those that have concerned more recent histo‐ politics, saying very little about perceptions of rians of political culture--political discourse, na‐ artistic, scientific, or other cultural developments. tional images, and the dynamics of public opin‐ Within these confines, Hampson sketches out an ion.[2] As a result of this broadening of the feld, argument which is generally compelling, if not fresh opportunities have been created to explore wholly unpredictable. the interaction of foreign policy and domestic pol‐ Before 1789, Hampson contends, French itics as they determined the course of the French views of the British political system broke down Revolution. into roughly three categories: the view that it was H-Net Reviews the embodiment of liberty, the view that it was breakdown in relations later that year? Hampson morally fawed for its alleged "corruption," and convincingly argues that it was a mix of domestic the view that it was not wholly without merit but factors and foreign policy considerations. The was becoming obsolete as a result of progress in September massacres, he contends, forever taint‐ the human sciences. In a particularly interesting ed the French Revolution in Britain, allowing the chapter--which really says more about the mal‐ Tories to blacken the reputation of the Whigs, leability of political convictions than it does about who had hitherto defended the Revolution, and to French public opinion as a whole--the author smear the radicals, who had identified themselves shows that adoption of any of these views before publicly with the Jacobins. In recalling their am‐ 1789 was not a reliable indicator of political posi‐ bassador upon Louis's suspension from his duties tion once the Revolution began. Maximilien Robe‐ in August, the British not only broke off formal spierre never much liked the British political sys‐ diplomatic relations but also advertised their dis‐ tem, whereas Jean-Paul Marat, who spent ten dain for the new French republic. The Conven‐ years in England, developed a high enough regard tion's decision to annex Savoy and its threats to for its political institutions to recommend them to Belgian independence only provided more grist his countrymen in 1789, as did the Monarchien for the propaganda mill of the Tories, who made Jean-Joseph Mounier. The coming of the Revolu‐ little effort to stop the drift to war. Indeed, admit‐ tion, the author shows, drove the two nations into ting that there was no real internal threat, a closer embrace than had existed for some time. William Pitt singled out French expansionism as While British government ministers welcomed the principal reason for hostilities, should they the chaos that promised to incapacitate French come. diplomatic initiatives, the British public saw in France's declaration of war on Britain in Feb‐ the events of 1789 the prelude to a rapproche‐ ruary 1793 formalized a rupture in relations ment of two nations bound by a common devo‐ which had already effectively occurred, prompt‐ tion to freedom. In France, suspicions remained ing both sides to fantasize about the perfidy of the greater. Anglophilia rapidly became associated other. Drawing upon suspicions which had never with the center-right, while the wave of Revolu‐ completely expired, the French perceived the long tionary institutional change promoted condescen‐ hand of Pitt in virtually every setback suffered by sion towards the more "backward" British. And the republic, while, beset with factional rivalries, yet, Hampson points out, the Revolutionaries did they slandered one another as secret agents of the offer Albion a tribute of sorts by measuring "New Carthage" (Hampson makes an heroic effort France's new institutions more against those of to elicit the truth from the tangled web of charges Britain than against those of any other nation. and counter-charges regarding collusion with the Moreover, despite strains caused by the Nootka British that was spun during the Terror, paying Sound incident of 1790--a conflict arising out of particular attention to the intrigues of the British Spain's efforts to gain French support of colonial undercover agent baron de Batz.). At the same claims contested by Britain--diplomatic relations time, the British--professing fear of secret agents had rarely been better. less than fear of offensive doctrines--found new These good relations even survived the wisdom in Edmund Burke's hitherto unheeded French declaration of war on Francis II, King of warnings about the Revolution's threat to civiliza‐ Hungary and Bohemia, in April 1792, when mis‐ tion, from which Pitt crafted an ideological bogey‐ sions were sent by the faction associated with man to curb the civil liberties of his opponents. Jacques Pierre Brissot to cement frmer alliances During the Directory, the moderating political cli‐ with Britain and Prussia. What, then, led to the mate in France and the growing belief in Britain 2 H-Net Reviews that civilization could survive the "sophisters" times more unflattering than, say, contemporary Burke had decried might have produced a lessen‐ French accounts of the Germans, which typically ing of tensions. But instead, Hampson concludes, consisted of little more than the saga of their the prolongation of war and its subsequent recur‐ rulers. French Anglophilia was rarely undiluted, rence under the enlightened despot Napoleon as Keith Baker has demonstrated in the case of only intensified them. As he so nicely puts it, "St. Montesquieu.[4] As for the supposedly An‐ George had got his dragon back" (p. 165). glophilic Voltaire, his description of Britain--much The virtues of this book are considerable. The like bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet's--as a "land author navigates the twists and turns of domestic of sects" was no simple encomium.[5] In other and foreign politics with a sure hand, and he tells words, the Anglophobic continuities might well be his story with clarity and wit. If the book does not greater than the author indicates, a point that a uproot orthodoxy in its overall argument, the au‐ forthcoming essay by David Bell on the "savage" thor makes a number of important revisionary image of Britain in pre-Revolutionary French war points along the way--noting, for example, the propaganda re-enforces. greater consistency with which Marat opposed Finally, one could have wished for a fuller war than did Robespierre, who is usually singled juxtaposition of Revolutionary Anglophobia with out in this respect. Any future student of the mate‐ other forms of xenophobia, especially Austropho‐ rial covered by the author will clearly have to use bia. It was, after all, allegations of Austrian ag‐ Hampson's conclusions as points of departure. gression and subversion which provided ideologi‐ At the same time, the book has its weakness‐ cal cover for the Brissotin drive to war in 1792, es. Among the relatively minor ones, it under-rec‐ even if Pitt emerged as the chief demon later on. ognizes the work of Jean-Louis Delolme, whose A year before the arch-Anglophobe Bertrand treatise The Constitution of England, published in Barere called for the extinction of the English multiple French and English editions, had greater race, he paired "the guile of Vienna" with "the cor‐ impact on pre-Revolutionary continental views of ruption of the court of Saint James" (p. 106). Such British politics, according to R. R. Palmer, than did an association raises the critical question of what the Spirit of the Laws.[3] More significantly, the connection he and the French generally imagined work does not fesh out the ideological content of between the two threats. A fuller appreciation of French Anglo-philia and -phobia nearly so much the ideological dimension, which tends to get as it might have, particularly given the important eclipsed in this book by the play of factional inter‐ leads provided by many scholars of the pre-Revo‐ ests, might have provided answers to this ques‐ lutionary period. A fuller exploration of the ideo‐ tion and produced a rounder picture of French logical depths might have led to a sounder conclu‐ perceptions of diplomatic relations.

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