André Siegfried and the Complexities of French Anti-Americanism

The Rise of the Anglo-Saxon: French Perceptions of the Anglo-American World in the Long Twentieth Century

“…Meanwhile, Siegfried used the term in numerous works, from his analysis of Canada entitled Le Canada: Les deux races (1906) to a noted study on Latin America in 1934. 26 In the latter, he drew on his extensive experiences of travelling the globe to contrast a Latin character defined by "la tristesse, l'indolence, l'altruisme et l'absence," with an Anglo-Saxon character driven by "l'optimisme, l'activité [et] la bonne volonté sociale." 27 These examples indicate that, despite the diversity of references to the Anglo-Saxon, by the 1930s there seemed to be a clear sense of what he (or, more rarely, she) looked like and how he saw the world.…”