Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French

Why the change of heart? Well, first of all Paris has to be seen to be believed. I'm a history buff, and the city is soaked with centuries of it. However, it was the people that really made an impression on me. I was assisted in my wanderings by a number of kind French, including a woman who gave myself and some others an impromptu tour of Notre Dame, and even had three of us over for (free) dinner at her parent's restaurant. And all that just because I asked her for directions! I confess that I fell in love with Paris, and after returning home I began looking for books to learn more about a place that could turn my opinions around so quickly.

I almost skipped over this one - the title and goofy cover art made me think it was some sort of satire. But I gave it a shot, and it turned out to be one of the best books I've read this year. It answered many questions I had about France and the French, from the turbulent history that formed the French national identity, to why a Frenchman spent about a minute correcting my pronounciation of "Champs Elysees." Better yet, the authors write in an accessible, entertaining style, even when dissecting the minutia of French government. A great read from start to finish - don't let this one get away.

I can't wait to go back to Paris, and if you feel as I do, or just want to know why "60 Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong", then by all means get this book!


fantastic book on all things French   May 17, 2004
Tim F. Martin (Madison, AL United States)
83 out of 98 found this review helpful

France is a land of contradictions. It is nation where people have seven weeks of paid vacation a year, generally take an hour and a half for lunch, have one of the longest life expectancies on the planet, work in the fourth largest economy in the world, and have one of the finest health care systems in the world. It is also a nation that has one of the lowest rates of charitable donations in the developed world, where people expect the State to do everything because they pay so much in taxes, where the civil service makes up about a quarter of the working population, and where local initiative or self-rule is virtually non-existent. What explains these many paradoxes?

Authors Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow sought to discover the source of these contrasts and to learn why the French were so different. Living for three years in France, they worked almost as ethnologists, delving into all aspects of French political, cultural, and economic life, uncovering many things from an outsider's perspective. Writing about the French civil service, economy, media, education, charities, unions, social welfare system, courts, politics, foreign policy, history, and language, they provide a thorough and very readable primer on all things French.

One thing they point out is that the French as a people love power. They have a great disdain for compromise - both in politics and even in personal conversations - instead preferring winners and losers, embracing particularly in politics what the authors termed "jusqu'au-boustisme" (until-the-bitter-end-ism), of the tendency in politics to pursue winning even to destructive ends. An ultimate expression of this might be found in the fact that State is absolute in French politics and society; it tolerates no rivals, whether it was the Catholic clergy's onetime dominance over the nation's education system or the existence of any meaningful regional government tied to a local culture, though the latter has changed some in recent years. The French love for their politicians to exhibit grandeur (and the politicians love to exhibit it), practicing something called cumul des mandates (or simply the cumul); it is possible for one to hold more than one elected office at the same time (for instance for a time President Jacques Chirac was also mayor of Paris, the prime minister, deputy from his home region of Correze, and a deputy in the European Parliament). Indeed the French President is one of the most powerful heads of state in the democratic world, in many ways more powerful that the American President.

Some of this lover of grandeur is exhibited in the fact that the French state is very much a unitary one, not a federal one; the central government in Paris reigns supreme, even in matters in the U.S. that would be regarded as strictly local affairs, such as the choosing of school textbooks or in most cases the management of local police. For instance the mayor of Paris does not control local police or transport, but they are instead controlled by the central government. Only towns of less than ten thousand citizens are allowed to control their own police.

This tendency to have a highly centralized, almost absolutist democracy though is not entirely due to a French love of grandeur. Much of dates back to the centuries long attempts to create the nation of France and keep it together, to impose French culture and language on more distant regions. At the time of the Revolution, the doctrine of the Republique was that "nothing should come between the citizen and the State." The French State actually created what we today call France, assimilating very diverse populations, giving them a single nationality, eradicating any local power or local language, acting for decades with extreme suspicion of anything (including churches) that fostered any sense of local community beyond the instruments of the state. Though France has levels of local administration - the Commune, the Department, and the Region - these do not exactly correspond to Canadian provinces or American states in that they have no sovereign rights themselves or exhibit any significant sense of French separation of powers, but instead are for the most part representatives of the central government. In the case of the 99 Departments, they were created as a result of the Revolution, often designed to deliberately break up regional identities, dividing lands with local identities into more than one Department, often given non-historical, sometimes deliberately meaningless names. The advent of the Region in 1982 reversed this to an extent, as Regions reflect natural cultural divisions in France, such as the areas inhabited by the Bretons, Occitan, or Corsicans, though some in France fear that this may lead to federalism one day (while at the same time France has given increasing powers to the supranational European Union).

This is not to say that the French State is anti-democratic; it was founded with three principles, assimilation (or eradication des particularismes; eradication of local differences), interet general (or common good), and equality (not only equality of opportunity but also equal or identical law throughout France). The principle of assimilation had been a driving force in creating the Departments (though ironically has made integration of the growing Muslim community in France difficult as it has until recently been regarded as illegal to even recognize special status or differences among French citizens).

There are checks on the Republique. In addition to civil and criminal law, the French have administrative law, an entirely parallel legal system for dealing with matters relating how the State relates to the citizens, administrative tribunals that can rule against government and the state. The growing independence of judges is another check. Protests are a way of life in France, a legitimate method for citizens to curb the system, the authors detailing this uniquely French form of political expression at some length.

I have barely scratched the surface in my review of this fascinating book. It is an absolute must read for anyone wanting to do business or live in France.


what does wrong mean?   March 11, 2004
AS, (Sarajevo)
45 out of 73 found this review helpful

This is an excellent book overall for the many reasons other reviewers have already covered. However, I'd like to pick a bit at the conclusions, starting with the title.

Read the book, then ask yourself what you personally actually want, and consider important. What are yuor values? Do you really want the French package? Bits of obviously, but not more. I'm a mixed-race European, I have a vacation apartment in France, speak the language well and enjoy the country very much, but I don't feel that I want what they want or have, and certainly wouldn't want to be what they are. Indeed, I heartily despise many of their values - reviewer J. Janus, ask yourself why the French helped the Americans in the war of independence? It might have been republican cameraderie, but wouldn't the chance to have a swipe at a long-term rival / enemy be more in keeping? Especially as you are bang on about their supporting their uncompetitive industries by selling high tech at high prices to despotic regimes which more humane (civilised?) countries refuse to supply. I also despise their obsessive hero-worship, weird nationalist inferiority/superiority complexes, etc.

Reading this book reminded me of the many reasons that I love and hate the French. As well as all the things I don't like, certainly I'm jealous of their fantastic country; one of the reasons their inefficient system survives is their effortless and abundant agriculture, tourism, etc - and in a way I secretly admire their balls at simply taking the idiot Germans/EU for a ride in terms of subsidising French delusions of economic and political grandeur. They can be extremely charming and have a marvellous sense of style: I think this comes in part from the one thing that makes them so maddeningly difficult to pigeon-hole; they are the only country that mixes being both northern and southern. (Culturally, I do not consider Italy a single country, it is northern in the north and southern in the south, not mixed.)

Enjoy the book, but form your own conclusions!


Journalism that reads like fiction   May 13, 2003
S. J. Simpson (Canada)
41 out of 43 found this review helpful

This is a rare breed in the world of nonfiction: a factual book you'll actually read through to the end.
In a lively style punctuated with anecdote, authors Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau trace how the society and politics of France have evolved over the centuries. The result? We start to understand there is a distinct French character and that the current showdown between France and the English-speaking world is not resistance for its own sake, but the result of the real, historic differences that exist.
This book is for anyone who has ever lived in France, visited or tried to do business with the French. It will illuminate some of the mysteries and answer questions you didn't know to ask.


A much needed antidote to a deadly epidemic of francophobia   May 30, 2003
40 out of 54 found this review helpful

This book offers a supremely well-balanced examination and analysis of France and the French, something very much needed with the paranoiac hysteria polluting the air waves, print and cyber space regarding the country that helped America win its freedom from Britain.

Do NOT think because of M. Benoit's name that he is just defending his own. M. Benoit is French-Canadian, coming from a people who have long ago severed their ties with the Continent. French-Canadians were well aware that France was occupied during the Second World War. Yet, although some brave individuals volunteered (including some in Britain's high-risk SOE missions to France and the Far East), a majority opposed the war, and one was even executed for refusing to don the King's uniform. M. Benoit's analysis, therefore, is as objective as that of Watson and Crick discovering DNA.

As such, this analysis does much to counter and expose the bacillus of francophobia currently infecting millions in North America.

In particular, "60 Million Frenchmen" does much to undo the popular mythologies spawned by Paul Webster's "Petain's Crime" and Michael Curtis' "Verdict on Vichy", both of which are so virulently francophobic that they would be immediately branded as racist had they targetted any other group. M. Benoit and Ms. Barlow point out, as Webster and Curtis attempt to downplay and hide, that 75% of Jews residing in France were saved by Frenchmen.

What is most curious about the Webster and Curtis books is how they attack the late Francois Mitterand for his minor involvement in Vichy, while they sing resounding hallelujahs about Jacques Chirac. M. Mitterand, for all his sins, actually declared war on Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War. Chirac, by contrast, is known to have been a personal friend of Saddam since the 1970's. It says much about Webster and Curtis that they choose to attack people either long or recently dead, or, at best, in senile old age, for alleged collaboration with "anti-Semitism", while they chose to deify a man who, until a month ago, was very actively collaborating with one of the world's most virulent LIVING anti-Semites!

So, forget Paxton, Rousso, Webster and Curtis. If you want the TRUE story of France, read "60 Million Frenchmen" and Julian Jackson's "France; The Dark Years 1940-44"!!!