Page 26 - BBC History - September 2017

Anglo-French relations

Travellers arrive in Calais in 1816.
At this time, a large proportion of
the town’s population was British,
including many lace workers
Are we too !xated on the idea that centuries. Although their role is seldom from Nottinghamshire
the French and the British were acknowledged in France’s grand national
permanently at each other’s throats narratives, they had a significant impact on
in the 18th and 19th centuries? the development of the country.
Fabrice Bensimon: War did play a crucial RM: As well as long-term migrants, a lot of
role in France and Britain’s relationship. But people regularly travelled back and forth
it’s important not to forget all the other types between the two countries. Many were
of interaction between the nations, such as crossing the Channel daily, such as fishermen,
migration, trade, intellectual exchanges and or packet boat operators transporting mail,
the circulation of political ideas. horses and travellers. After studying official
Renaud Morieux: Although war may have trade statistics, many historians have
set Britain and France at odds with one concluded that France and Britain were not
another across the two centuries, at the same major trading partners in this period. But if
time it was also a productive means of you look at all the illegal smuggling that was
cultural exchange. There are plenty of taking place under the radar, then you
examples of prisoners of war engaging discover a whole range of exchanges that were
peacefully with their ‘enemies’, including lots going on for centuries.
of stories of French soldiers in England
marrying English women, and the reverse How did nationalism a"ect the two
happening across the Channel. nations’ relationship?
RM: For a lot of ordinary people in the 18th
So French and British people wouldn’t century, allegiance to your own country
have just encountered each other on wasn’t necessarily that important – the idea of
the battle!eld? nationalism arguably hadn’t been invented
FB: They’d have worked together in all kinds yet. For many people at this time, what really
of ways – and the port of Calais is a good mattered was not their ‘nation’ but their local-
example of how they did so. Today, Calais is ity. The term ‘foreigner’ was commonly used
a site of great tension, based around the fact to refer to someone who lived outside the
that some migrants see it as a potential place parish, rather than in another country.
of entry into Britain. In the 19th century, Whether people defined themselves as
things were very different. Calais was a place ‘French’ or ‘English’ depended on context.
of entry, but into France for British workers, There were privateers from the Channel
aristocrats and members of the middle class. Islands who had family on both coasts and
The town also had a strong community spoke both languages. They were very shrewd So French workers felt a degree
of lace workers from Nottinghamshire. and able to play this dual nationality to their of solidarity with their British
Thousands of them settled there to avoid advantage. If they met an English warship, counterparts. Was this sentiment
paying duties (or smuggling costs) to sell their they would display an English licence, while if shared by the elites?
goods on the French market. As a result, they came across a French customs and RM: The elites of pre-Revolutionary France
a significant proportion of Calais’ population revenues ship they would quickly produce a viewed Britain – and, in particular, England
was British. French passport. So national identity wasn’t – as a riotous country which, sooner or later,
British migrants were key to France’s necessarily a deeply felt sentiment. would be consumed by revolution. They
industrial evolution in the 18th and 19th Sometimes cross-national alliances proved believed that the 1688 Glorious Revolution, in
more important. Fishermen from Dieppe which James II (and VII) was deposed, had
were often at odds with their competitors left England’s institutions unstable. Eruptions
from Dunkirk, so preferred to align of unrest and rioting over the following
themselves with those from Harwich or century supported this idea.
Dover. In petitions to the state they would FB: This view of British instability continued
downplay their nationality, emphasising their well into the 19th century – and was, in the
French and common interests with their friends across eyes of Britain’s French critics, confirmed by
the Channel, and calling their fellow French
the Swing Riots of 1830 [in response to land
British workers subjects “pirates” or “worse than Turks”. enclosure and the mechanisation of agricul-
tural practices]; the Reform Act crisis [early
FB: French and British workers were also
some of the first to rally together across 1830s], when attempts to suppress electoral
were among the national borders. The International reform triggered lethal riots; and the violent
Workingmen’s Association, founded in opposition to the introduction of the 1834
!rst to campaign London in 1864, partly began as an ‘New Poor Law’ [widely associated with the
association between French and British emergence of the workhouse].
together for their workers who wanted to organise together, Around this time, the French historian
above all, to prevent employers importing and political writer Alexis de Tocqueville
rights across foreign workers to break strikes. They felt that visited Britain and Ireland. In his diary of GETTY IMAGES
those travels, Tocqueville concluded that
their governments and employers were
national borders placing them in opposition to one another, revolution was inevitable, as the country
while in reality they had shared interests.
could no longer sustain such volatility.
26 BBC History Magazine