That Sweet Enemy brings both British wit (Robert Tombs is a British historian) and French panache (Isabelle Tombs is a French historian) to bear on three centuries of the history of Britain and France. From Waterloo to Chirac’s slandering of British cooking, the authors chart this cross-channel entanglement and the unparalleled breadth of cultural, economic, and political influence it has wrought on both sides, illuminating the complex and sometimes contradictory aspects of this relationship—rivalry, enmity, and misapprehension mixed with envy, admiration, and genuine affection—and the myriad ways it has shaped the modern world.
Written with wit and elegance, and illustrated with delightful images and cartoons from both sides of the Channel,
That Sweet Enemy is a unique and immensely enjoyable history, destined to become a classic.
“Magnificent. . . . An important interpretation of one of Europe’s defining relationships and a rollicking, eventful cultural tour.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“A remarkably inventive, stylish, and audacious work. . . . One of the most engaging and invigorating works of international history I’ve read in years.” —Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic Monthly
“Grand and luminously detailed.” —The New York Review of Books
“It took two people, one English and the other French, to write a book as compendious and unbiased as [That Sweet Enemy]. And it didn't hurt that each seems to have an excellent sense of humor.”
—Los Angeles Times
Isabelle Tombs was born in France, studied at the Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and received a Ph.D in modern British history at Trinity College, Cambridge. Robert Tombs was born in England, studied at Cambridge, and conducted doctoral research on modern French history in France where he was connected to Université de Paris IV (Sorbonne). Presently, Isabelle teaches French at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Robert is a reader in French History at Cambridge and a Fellow of St. John's College. They live in Cambridge, England.
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I: STRUGGLE
Chapter 1: Britain Joins Europe
—The Sun King
—William of Orange
—Exiles: Huguenots and Jacobites
Britain at the Heart of Europe, 1688–1748
—Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre
—Fontenoy, May 11, 1745
France and the Young Chevalier, 1744–46
—Symbols
The End of the Beginning
—On His Most Christian Majesty’s Service
Money: Waging War with Gold
Britain: “Breaking windows with guineas”
—Blowing Bubbles
France: The Insolvent Landlord
Chapter 2: Thinking, Pleasing, Seeing
—Portraying the Other: Rapin and Hamilton
Voyages of Intellectual Discovery
Travellers’ Tales
—Le Blanc’s England
—Mrs. Thrale and Madame Du Bocage
Fashionable Feelings: The Age of Pamela and Julie
—The Sincerest Form of Flattery
—The Other Pamela
Love, Hate and Ambivalence
—Drawing a Lesson
—Garrick’s French Dancers
The French and Shakespeare: The Age of Voltaire
Chapter 3: The Sceptre of the World
Sugar and Slaves
The Wealth of the Indies
“A few acres of snow”
The Seven Years War, 1756–63
—Perfidious Albion
—Encouraging the Others
Pitt and Choiseul
Years of Victory, 1757–63
—Dead Heroes
Taking Possession of the Globe
Language: The Challenge to French Ascendancy
Chapter 4: The Revenger’s Tragedy
Choiseul Plans Revenge
Taking the Great out of Britain: The Second War for America, 1776–83
—Enter Figaro
—Revolutionary Aristocrats
Saving Captain Asgill
The Biter Bit, 1783–90
—Cricket: The Tour of ’89
Chapter 5: Ideas and Bayonets
Blissful Dawn
—Reflecting on Revolution
—Cannibals and Heroes
Jour de Gloire
—Exiles: The Revolution
Internal Injuries
From Unwinnable War to Uneasy Peace
—The First Kiss This Ten Years!
Culture Wars
Chapter 6: Changing the Face of the World
Napoleonic Visions
Earth’s Best Hopes? British Resistance, 1803–5
—No Common War
—Relics of What Might Have Been
The Whale and the Elephant
The Continental System versus the Cavalry of St. George
—Captives
From the Tagus to the Berezina, 1807–12
Invasion, 1813–14
—Le Cimetière des Anglais
The End of the Hundred Years War, 1815
—Echoes of Waterloo
Part I: Conclusions and Disagreements
Origins
Culture
Politics
The Economy
Europe
The World
Interlude: The View from St. Helena
PART II: COEXISTENCE
Chapter 7: Plucking the Fruits of Peace
Our Friends the Enemy
—The British in Paris
—Fast Food à l’anglaise
—Pau: Britain in Béarn
Romantic Encounters
—The French and Shakespeare: The Romantics
King Cotton, Queen Silk
—Navvies and “Knobsticks”
Fog and Misery
Ally or “Anti-France”?
Chapter 8: The War That Never Was
A Beautiful Dream: The First Entente Cordiale, 1841–46
“God bless the narrow sea”: From Revolution to Empire, 1848–52
—The Prince-President’s First Lady
—Exiles: Hugo and the Stormy Voices of France
“Such a faithful ally,” 1853–66
—Comrades in Arms
—Brumagem Bombs for Bonaparte
Tales of Two Cities
—Englishness in Paris: The Dressmaker and the Whore
—London through French Eyes
Spectators of Disaster, 1870–71
—Exiles: After the “Terrible Year”
Chapter 9: Decadence and Regeneration
Into the Abysm
—Pilgrims of Pleasure: The Prince of Wales and Oscar Wilde
—Depravity and Corruption
Regeneration: Power and Empire
—The Tunnel: False Dawn
Education, Education, Education
Putting Colour into French Cheeks
Food and Civilization
On the Brink, 1898–1902
—Exiles: Oscar Wilde and Émile Zola
—magining the Enemy
Back from the Brink: Towards a New Entente Cordiale, 1902–4
—“Vive Notre Bon Édouard!”
Part II: Conclusions and Disagreements
Interlude: Perceptions
Origins: Race, Land, Climate
Religion, Immorality and Perfidy
Nature versus Civilization
Masculinity and Femininity
Materialism, Exploitation and Greed
PART III: SURVIVAL
Chapter 10: The War to End Wars
From Entente to Alliance, 1904–14
The British and the Defence of France, 1914
Les Tommy and the French
—“Bene and Hot”
—“Le Foot”
Stalemate and Slaughter, 1915–17
The Road to Pyrrhic Victory, 1918
Remembrance
Chapter 11: Losing the Peace
Paris and Versailles, 1918–19: A Tragedy of Disappointment
—Clemenceau, a Disillusioned Anglophile
—The Political Consequences of Mr. Keynes
Estrangement, 1919–25
—The Tunnel: Bowing to Providence
Mixed Feelings, 1919–39
—From Englishman in Paris to Frenchman in Hollywood
Towards the Dark Gulf, 1929–39
Chapter 12: Finest Hours, Darkest Years
The “Phoney War,” September 1939–May 1940
The Real Disaster, May–June 1940
—Dunkirk and the French, May 26–June 4
—“No Longer Two Nations”: June 16, 1940
—Mers el-Kébir
Churchill and de Gaulle
Bearing the Cross of Lorraine
Feeding the Flame
Liberation, 1943–44
Part III: Conclusions and Disagreements
Between the Wars
The Second World War
Interlude: The French and Shakespeare: The Other French Revolution
PART IV: REVIVAL
Chapter 13: Losing Empires, Seeking Roles
European Visions, 1945–55
Imperial Debacle, 1956
European Revenge, 1958–79
—Higher, Faster, Dearer: The Concorde Complex
Satisfactions of Grandeur and Pleasures of Decline
—Je t’aime, moi non plus
Chapter 14: Ever Closer Disunion
A French or British Europe? Napoleon versus Adam Smith
—France and the Falklands War
—Thatcher and the Revolution, 1989
So Near and Yet So Far
—The Tunnel: Breakthrough
—Language: Voting with Your Tongue
Size Matters
—The Non-Identical Twins
Europe’s Warrior Nations
—Bangs and Bucks
—Desperate to Be Friends: Celebrating the Entente Cordiale, 1904–2004
2005: Déjà Vu All Over Again
Part IV: Conclusions and Disagreements
Picking Up the Threads
Notes
Bibliography
Index
