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EYE ON EUROPE |
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IN A LATIN WORLD
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The French aren't eager
to be 'Anglo-Saxonized'
of Thecolumnists.com
BORDEAUX --
I was at a dinner
party last week enjoying some fine cuisine when a French gentleman
broached the touchy subject of globalization--“a fantasy
of the Anglo-Saxon mind,” as he put it. I noticed he pronounced
“Anglo-Saxon” with a distinct hiss. Suddenly it hit
me: this term has become a symbol of scorn around here.
To my relief, no one seemed to know, or perhaps care, that I was the lone Anglo-Saxon at the table. Too bad, in a way, because with a little time to think it over I could have come back with a snappy denial. I happen to know that, contrary to popular belief, my Scots-Irish heritage disqualifies me from that ethnic group. Of all the various elements gathered up in a true Anglo-Saxon, the Scottish and the Irish never were never part of the game.
Today the broader meaning of “Anglo-Saxon,” their people and their ways, is on the minds of the French and the Italians as their governments campaign to install perceived modern Anglo-Saxon attitudes in their reluctant people. These include a strong work ethic, social mobility and a drive to make the most money possible in your lifetime.
But the French don’t really approve of a free-for-all business world. They enjoy their leisure time and they love their 35-hour work week. They have always done fine as a protected little country with quaint methods to keep out competitors.
And so in the political opposition, “Anglo-Saxon” has become a bogeyman -- synonymous with cowboy capitalism, which in turn means deregulated markets, maximum profit for the shareholders, and minimal safety nets for workers. In short, a society of self-reliance but without the safeguards they know and love.
But will Anglo-Saxonism ever really catch on? I don’t think so. French President Nicholas Sarkozy has made himself a figure of fun in the local press with his Anglo-Saxon slogan “Work harder to earn more.” And In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is trying to bring similar values to the fore but faces even more resistance.
This tension between European cultures and the Anglo-Saxons, however you define them, is nothing very new. It has been brewing since about 1066 when the Saxons clashed with the invading Normans at the Battle of Hastings. Outside the history books, the most that survives of Saxon culture today is their profanity, derivatives of which are still widely used, especially regarding globalization.
My wife likes to remind me--only half-jokingly--that until the Normans landed, the Anglo-Saxons had spent their summer nights covered in blue paint dancing around bonfires. “We civilized them,” she says. “They didn’t know what a fork was!” (Their descendants still love their bonfires once a year, on Guy Fawkes night, when they assemble to stare into the flames. The blue paint is gone, though.)
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the true Anglo-Saxon as the collective name for the Saxons of Great Britain as distinct from the continental (German) Saxons who migrated west in the fifth and sixth centuries. Proper usage of the term applies only to early people of southeast England. Over time, though, the label “Anglo-Saxon” became shorthand for a set of nations led by the United States and including Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
On principle, I have trouble with this loose usage. I’m a purist.
It seems especially wrong-headed whenever I try to find Anglo-Saxons in real life. I was in Boston to visit my daughters recently and noticed the streets teeming with Irish, Scots, Italians, Asians, blacks, Hispanics and Indians. To get around in a taxi, it helps to speak Haitian French. Hardly an Anglo-Saxon is in sight.
To be sure, the names we give other peoples are often dubious, beginning with what Americans call “Indians.” White men are known in U.S. police work as “Caucasian males,” a 19th century racial classification long since discredited. When I began my academic career in New Mexico, where I discovered tequila, I heard myself referred to by Hispanic friends as an “Anglo.” I guess that was less offensive than “gringo.”
When my dinner party friend finished his rant against the Anglo-Saxon plot called globalization, the talk returned to calmer themes. Another bottle of Bordeaux rouge was produced by the host. It came from a local vineyard owned by an Anglo-Saxon, but nobody seemed to notice, or care.
©2008 by Michael Johnson. This column first posted May 12, 2008.
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