[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] Canada and France
Jul. 15th, 2008 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonald(I would have posted this on the 14th, but Livejournal.com went down for emergency maintenance. Sorry.)
I'd like to wish France and the French and any French readers a happy Bastille Day. The fact that the French and American national holidays happen to be separated on the calendar by only ten days is one of a series of minor coincidences linking the very significant French and American republics. Both regime are universalistic republics claiming to be radical breaks with the past despite being traditional and even archaic in some ways, both have long histories of successful mass immigration that happen to be politically contentious in the here-and-now, both have long histories of military unilateralism, et cetera. That may well be the source of Franco-American antagonisms, Mon semblable, mon frère, and all that.
As I noted back on the 4th of July, Canada owes its existence to the historical tensions between the French kingdom and the British colonies that would one day become the United States. The American republic has most certainly played a critical role in the formation of an independent Canada, by creating an Other against which Canadians (perhaps, especially, insecure English Canadians) could define themselves and helping to introduce the Loyalists into what had been a firmly Francophone central Canada. The various French republics (and assorted other regimes) haven't had nearly as much influence.
A good part of this is owing to the fact that France had been separated from Canada for a good while, the storming of the Bastille occurring 26 years after the Treaty of Paris handed Canada over to the British. The quelques arpents de neige of Voltaire don't seem to have ever been treated seriously, and the assimilation of the colonists taken as a given. Thus, in 1831 de Tocqueville was quite surprised to hear hundreds of thousands of Lower Canadians still speaking French.
Afterwards, Franco-Canadian relations have consistently been led by the existence of French Canadians and the province of Québec and France's interest in both population and state. On Bastille Day in 1855, the French frigate La Capricieuse visited Québec City, the first French naval ship to do so since 1760; Napoleon III was reportedly interested in cultivating some sort of official French interest in French Canada; in 1882, just a couple of years after Sir Alexander Galt was made first Canadian High Commissioner in London, former senator and journalist Hector Fabre was selected by the Québec provincial government to be its general agent in France, this position being shared between Québec and Canada until the professionalization of Canada's foreign service led to the disappearance of Québec's representation in France. Few French (or Belgian) immigrants showed up, and certainly the constitutional ties severed in 1763 have never regrown, but by the early 20th century the expected dense networks of cultural and economic ties linking France with the largest Francophone society outside of Europe were forming.
France is a major influence in Québec, and Bastille day might mean something to Québécois. Might. In English Canada, French holidays unexpectedly don't matter at all, as an increasingly theoretical bilingualism and the steady confederalization of Canada would seem to indicate. If English Canadians (as a group) aren't interested in talking to the Québécois their co-citizens, why would they be particularly interested (as a group) in talking to the Québécois' co-linguals, and how would they exchange many cultural elements directly? That's not to say that there haven't been such exchanges--Toronto's Nuit Blanche was based on the Paris original--but they're minor. On the economic front, even though France is Canada's eighth-largest trading partner, and even though Canada (and/or Québec) and France are in some sort of talk regarding the possible, possible creation of a Canada-EU free trade agreement of possibly some value. As for politics, although France and Canada do share similar views on multilateralism in the wider world and on the protection of cultural industries, France's republican and laic traditions don't have the same resonance in an English Canada formed out of British constitutionalism and increasingly influenced by American concepts that they might have in Québec. (Not that Québec is all that "French" in this regard either: Nearly two and a half centuries of British influences tell.) It's a pity about the invisibility and all, but what, realistically, can be done about this? France just can't be as much of a cutlural or economic heavyweight as the United States or that country's various Asian partners/competitors.
Regardless, here's to France, Canada's invisible ally and traditional friend. Vive la République!
I'd like to wish France and the French and any French readers a happy Bastille Day. The fact that the French and American national holidays happen to be separated on the calendar by only ten days is one of a series of minor coincidences linking the very significant French and American republics. Both regime are universalistic republics claiming to be radical breaks with the past despite being traditional and even archaic in some ways, both have long histories of successful mass immigration that happen to be politically contentious in the here-and-now, both have long histories of military unilateralism, et cetera. That may well be the source of Franco-American antagonisms, Mon semblable, mon frère, and all that.
As I noted back on the 4th of July, Canada owes its existence to the historical tensions between the French kingdom and the British colonies that would one day become the United States. The American republic has most certainly played a critical role in the formation of an independent Canada, by creating an Other against which Canadians (perhaps, especially, insecure English Canadians) could define themselves and helping to introduce the Loyalists into what had been a firmly Francophone central Canada. The various French republics (and assorted other regimes) haven't had nearly as much influence.
A good part of this is owing to the fact that France had been separated from Canada for a good while, the storming of the Bastille occurring 26 years after the Treaty of Paris handed Canada over to the British. The quelques arpents de neige of Voltaire don't seem to have ever been treated seriously, and the assimilation of the colonists taken as a given. Thus, in 1831 de Tocqueville was quite surprised to hear hundreds of thousands of Lower Canadians still speaking French.
Afterwards, Franco-Canadian relations have consistently been led by the existence of French Canadians and the province of Québec and France's interest in both population and state. On Bastille Day in 1855, the French frigate La Capricieuse visited Québec City, the first French naval ship to do so since 1760; Napoleon III was reportedly interested in cultivating some sort of official French interest in French Canada; in 1882, just a couple of years after Sir Alexander Galt was made first Canadian High Commissioner in London, former senator and journalist Hector Fabre was selected by the Québec provincial government to be its general agent in France, this position being shared between Québec and Canada until the professionalization of Canada's foreign service led to the disappearance of Québec's representation in France. Few French (or Belgian) immigrants showed up, and certainly the constitutional ties severed in 1763 have never regrown, but by the early 20th century the expected dense networks of cultural and economic ties linking France with the largest Francophone society outside of Europe were forming.
France is a major influence in Québec, and Bastille day might mean something to Québécois. Might. In English Canada, French holidays unexpectedly don't matter at all, as an increasingly theoretical bilingualism and the steady confederalization of Canada would seem to indicate. If English Canadians (as a group) aren't interested in talking to the Québécois their co-citizens, why would they be particularly interested (as a group) in talking to the Québécois' co-linguals, and how would they exchange many cultural elements directly? That's not to say that there haven't been such exchanges--Toronto's Nuit Blanche was based on the Paris original--but they're minor. On the economic front, even though France is Canada's eighth-largest trading partner, and even though Canada (and/or Québec) and France are in some sort of talk regarding the possible, possible creation of a Canada-EU free trade agreement of possibly some value. As for politics, although France and Canada do share similar views on multilateralism in the wider world and on the protection of cultural industries, France's republican and laic traditions don't have the same resonance in an English Canada formed out of British constitutionalism and increasingly influenced by American concepts that they might have in Québec. (Not that Québec is all that "French" in this regard either: Nearly two and a half centuries of British influences tell.) It's a pity about the invisibility and all, but what, realistically, can be done about this? France just can't be as much of a cutlural or economic heavyweight as the United States or that country's various Asian partners/competitors.
Regardless, here's to France, Canada's invisible ally and traditional friend. Vive la République!
