Shadow and Light

This article is a study of a neglected yet significant French writer on the United States, Louis-Xavier Eyma (1816–76). In the period of the Second Empire (1852–70), Eyma wrote more about the United States than any other author, and was recognised as a reliable and influential guide to US society. What makes his career particularly interesting is that his work defies any simple categorisation. Whilst elements of his writings smack of anti-Americanism, he wrote with admiration about many aspects of US democracy and society. At the same time, he did not belong to the group of liberal writers who, according to some scholars, used praise of the United States as a coded means of criticising repressive government at home. Eyma was a staunch monarchist who opposed the introduction of democracy in his native France. Eyma's career demonstrates the complexity of French attitudes towards the United States, and points towards the need for a comprehensive study of French writing about the United States in the period of the Second Empire. Keywords: French opinion of the United Statesanti-Americanismnineteenth-century France Notes 1. R. Rémond, Les états-unis devant l’opinion française, 1815–1852 (Paris, 1962); J. Portes, Fascinations and Misgivings: The United States in French Opinion, 1870–1914 (Cambridge, 2000). Some writers of the Second Empire are analysed in J. Jennings, ‘French Visions of America: From Tocqueville to the Civil War' in A. Craiutu and J. Isaacs (eds), America Through European Eyes (Pennsylvania, 2009), 161–84. On literary and theatrical representations of the United States for part of this period, see S. Jeune, De F. T. Graindorge à A. O. Barnabooth: les types américains dans le roman et le théâtre français, 1861–1917 (Paris, 1963). The most comprehensive account is perhaps T. A. Sancton, ‘America in the Eyes of the French Left’ (PhD diss., Oxford, 1978). 2. On the Civil War, G. M. Blackburn, French Newspaper Opinion on the American Civil War (Westport, 1997); S. Gavronsky, The French Liberal Opposition and the American Civil War (New York, 1968). 3. F. Monaghan, French Travellers in the United States, 1765–1932 (New York, 1961). 4. For example, J.-H. Grandpierre, A Parisian Pastor's Glance at America (Boston, 1854); C. Pascal, A travers l’Atlantique et dans le nouveau monde (Paris, 1870). 5. On the separation of Church and State, see T. Verhoeven, Trans-Atlantic Anti-Catholicism: France and the United States in the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave, 2010), 48–52. 6. B. Karsky, ‘Les libéraux français et l’émancipation des esclaves aux états-unis, 1852–70’, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, xxi (1974), 575–90. 7. North Amerıcan Revıew, Jan. 1863, 257. 8. Revue des deux mondes, 15 Oct. 1861. 9. M. S. Schriber, ‘Louis-Xavier Eyma and the French Image of America’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1967). Schriber places Eyma's writings within the analytical structure established by Leo Marx in his The Machine in the Garden (1964). For French audiences, she argues, Eyma offered a compelling reconciliation of the twin ideals of the United States as an untouched wilderness yet at the same time a society devoted to technological progress. 10. T. Zeldin, France 1848–1945 (New York, 1977), ii. 129. 11. P. Hollander (ed), Understanding anti-Americanism: Its Origins and Impact at Home and Abroad (Chicago, 2004), 5. Other major works on anti-Americanism not cited below include: T. Judt and D. Lacorne (eds), With Us or Against Us: Studies in Global Anti-Americanism (New York, 2005); G. Katzarov (ed), Regards sur l'antiaméricanisme: une histoire culturelle (Paris, 2004); J. Fuks, L'anti-américanisme au sein de la gauche socialiste francaise: de la libération aux années 2000 (Paris, 2010); O. Dard and H.-J. Lusebrink (eds), Américanisations et anti-américanismes comparés (Villeneuve d'Ascq, 2008); B. O’Connor (ed), Anti-Americanism: history, causes, and themes. 4 vols. (Oxford, 2007). 12. A. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (Princeton, 2007), 74. US conservatives also appear convinced that France is a peculiarly duplicitous ally. Amongst the many shrill denunciations of France after 2001, see K. R. Timmerman, The French Betrayal of America (New York, 2005). 13. S. Meunier, ‘Anti-Americanisms in France’, French Politics, Culture & Society, xxiii (2005), 126. 14. B. Rubin and J. Colp Rubin, Hating America: A History (Oxford, 2004), 30. For a French perspective, see N. Mamcre and P. Farbiaz, Dangereuse Amérique (Paris, 2002), 63. 15. D. Echeverria, ‘L'Amérique devant l'opinion française, 1734–1870: Questions de méthode et d'interprétation’, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, ix (1962), 61. 16. Journal du droit criminel, ou jurisprudence criminelle de la France (1867), 359–60. 17. Gavronsky, The French Liberal Opposition, 247. See also his ‘American Slavery and the French Liberals an Interpretation of the Role of Slavery in French Politics During the Second Empire’, Journal of Negro History, li (1966), 36–52; Echeverria, ‘L'Amérique devant l'opinion française’. 18. For an exploration of this conundrum in a recent context, see R. Kuisel's forthcoming The French Way: How France Embraced and Rejected American Values and Power (Princeton, 2011). 19. M.-F. Toinet, ‘Does anti-Americanism exist?’ in D. Lacorne, J. Rupnik and M.-F. Toinet (eds), The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism: a Century of French Perception (Hampshire, 1990), 219. See also I. Tyrrell, ‘American Exceptionalism and anti-Americanism’, in Brendon O’Connor (ed), Anti-Americanism: History, Causes, and Themes (Oxford, 2007), ii. 99, 107. 20. L.-X. Eyma, Les deux Amériques: histoire, mœurs et voyages (Paris, 1853), 250. 21. L.-X. Eyma, Excentricités américaines (Paris, 1863), 43. 22. Eyma, Deux Amériques, 123. 23. Ibid., 124. 24. Ibid., 49. 25. Ibid., 185. 26. Ibid., 50. 27. Ibid., 194. 28. L.-X. Eyma, Introduction à une politique générale (Paris, 1842); quote from Schriber, ‘French Image of America’, 10. 29. Eyma's correspondence is collected at [Bibliothèque nationale, Eyma correspondence], N[ouvelles] a[cquisitions] f[rançaises] 21014 . 30. Rémond, Les états-unis, ii. 862. 31. T. Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals 1944–56 (Berkeley, 1992), 188. 32. D. Strauss, Menace in the West: the rise of French anti-Americanism in Modern Times (Westport, 1978), 9. 33. R. F. Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley, 1993), 1. 34. J.-B. Duroselle, La France et les États-Unis des origines à nos jours (Paris, 1976). 35. P. Roger, The American Enemy: A Story of French anti-Americanism (Chicago, 2005), 94, 73. 36. Eyma to Nadar, private, n.d. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection Félix et Paul Nadar, Nouvelles Acquisitions Françaises 24269. A summary of Eyma's career is contained in a report by the Prefecture of police to the Interior Minister assessing his demand for authorisation to publish the Nouvelliste de Paris in 1874. Paris, Archives Nationales, Series F18, file 317. Other surveys of his career are: G. Vapereau, Dictionnaire universel des contemporains (Paris, 1880), 675; R. Hamel, La Louisiane Créole, littéraire, politique et sociale, 1762–1900, vol. 2 (Ottawa, 1984); E. L. Tinker, Les écrits de la langue française en Louisiane au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1932); A. Viatte, ‘Complément à la bibliographie louisianaise d’Edward Larocque Tinker’, Revue de Louisiane, iii (1974–5), 495. Eyma was awarded the Legion d’Honneur in 1870; the file on his award, which contains his birth certificate, is accessible at: http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/leonore_fr 37. Louis Ulbach, Revue de Paris, xxi (1854), 952. Frank Monaghan states that Eyma's writings were ‘influential in the formation of French opinion of the United States’: French Travellers, 39. 38. Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, 27 May 1860. Another review in the same journal praised Eyma's ‘serious talent’ and his ‘conscientious information’ which, among French writers on the United States, ‘assured him a distinguished rank’: 22 Nov. 1857. 39. La morale indépendante, 5. Nov. 1865. 40. Revue critique des livres nouveaux (Paris, 1853), 436. 41. Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, 2 Oct. 1861. See also Revue du monde catholique, iii (1862), 34. 42. Revue bibliographique, 30 Sept., 1862. 43. Le petit journal, 25 Nov. 1863. 44. A series of articles in Paris-magazine: Lectures de famille, Apr.–July 1873; Journal des économistes ‘La Récolte et l’exportation du coton aux États-Unis en 1860’, xxviii (1860), 261–4. 45. Courrier du dimanche, 16 Nov. 1862. 46. Revue nationale et étrangère, politique, scientifique et littéraire, v (1861), 169–70. 47. Larousse grand dictionnaire universel (Paris, 1870), vii. 301. 48. E. Glaeser (ed), Biographie nationale des contemporains (Parıs, 1878), 233. 49. A. Carette, La République et le régime parlementaire (Parıs, 1887), 30–1. 50. H. Lamirault (ed), La grande encyclopédie : inventaire raisonné des sciences, des lettres et des arts, vol. 16, 1007. 51. L.-X. Eyma, Les femmes du nouveau monde (Paris, 1860), 1. 52. L.-X. Eyma, La république américaine: ses institutions – ses homes (Paris, 1861), i. 36. 53. Ibid., 2. 54. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York, 1990), i. 14. 55. Author's preface to 12th edition, in ibid., xxi. 56. Eyma, République américaine, 9. Some modern commentators have expressed a similar criticism. For example, R. M. Smith, ‘Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America’, American Political Science Review, lxxxvii (1993), 549–66. 57. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, i. 169–70. 58. Eyma, Deux amériques, 197–8. 59. O. Comettant, L'Amérique telle qu'elle est: voyage anecdotique de Marcel Bonneau dans le nord et le sud des états-unis (Paris, 1864), 208. 60. Eyma, République américaine, 10–11. 61. For a longer consideration of the differences between Chevalier and Tocqueville, see Jeremy Jennings, ‘Democracy before Tocqueville: Michel Chevalier's America’, Review of Politics, lxviii (2006), 398–427. 62. Eyma, Deux Amériques, 137. 63. Ibid., 133. 64. Tocqueville to Eyma, private, 8 Jan. 1853, Naf 21014. 65. Chevalier to Eyma, private, 15 Mar. 1861, Naf 21014. 66. Chevalier to Eyma, private, 20 Jan. 1862, Naf 21014. 67. The documents concerning this and his subsequent trip are gathered in [Paris] A[rchives] N[ationales], series F17, file 2960. 68. R. Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism 1789–1914 (New York, 1989), 122. 69. Eyma, Deux Amériques, 91. 70. L.-X. Eyma, ‘De l’instruction publique aux États-Unis d’Amérique et en France’, L’Illustration, 17 Mar. 1849. 71. AN, Series F17, File 2960. 72. O. Audouard, A travers l'Amérique (Paris, 1870), 53–4. 73. F. Mayeur, L'éducation des filles en France au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1979), 135. On Duruy, see Sandra Ann Horvath, ‘Victory Duruy and the Controversy over Secondary Education for Girls’, French Historical Studies, ix (Spring 1975), 83–104. 74. P. Robriquet, Discours et opinion de Jules Ferry (Paris, 1893), i. 305. 75. Eyma, Deux Amériques, 92. 76. Ibid., 79. 77. Ibid., 44. 78. Eyma, République américaine, 38–9. 79. Eyma, Deux Amériques, 39. 80. Zeldin, France, 129. 81. G. Houbre, La discipline de l'amour: L'éducation sentimentale des filles et des garçons à l'âge du romantisme (Paris, 1997), 256–7; Y. Knibiehler, De la Pucelle à la Minette: Les jeunes filles de l'âge classique à nos jours (Paris, 1983). 82. Revue des deux mondes, 19 June 1864. 83. Eyma, Femmes du nouveau monde, 120. 84. Ibid., 121. 85. Ibid., 129. 86. L.-X. Eyma, Scènes de moeurs et de voyages dans le nouveau-monde (Paris, 1862), 70. 87. Ibid., 118–9. 88. Audouard, A travers l’Amérique, 345. 89. A. Carlier, Marriage in the United States (Boston, 1867), 33–4. 90. Cited in Zeldin, France, 130. 91. Eyma, Femmes du nouveau monde, 123. 92. Ibid., 75. 93. Roger, American Enemy, 90. 94. On the liberal position of men such as Gasparin, see Karsky, ‘Les libéraux français’; Gavronsky, ‘American Slavery’. 95. Zeldin, France, 129. 96. L.-X. Eyma, Les peaux noires: scènes de la vie des esclaves (Paris, 1857), viii. 97. Ibid., 4. 98. On Stowe's influence, see E. E. Lucas, La littérature anti-esclavagiste au 19ème siècle: Étude sur Mme Beecher Stowe et son influence en France (Bordeaux, 1930). 99. Eyma, Peaux noires, 298. 100. Courrier du dimanche, 14 Dec. 1862. 101. Ibid., 16 Nov. 1862. 102. Eyma, République américaine, 5. 103. Sancton, ‘America in the Eyes of the French Left.’ 104. Eyma, Deux Amériques, 195. 105. Eyma, République américaine, 8. Additional informationNotes on contributorsTim Verhoeven Tim Verhoeven teaches modern history at Monash University, Australia

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