At the moment, I’m watching a documentary on PBS about the American Revolution and there’s plenty of intercutting between American scholars and British scholars on the American Revolution, but no French scholars. Now, I realize that the Revolutionary War was primarily an American and British affair, but without the French it’s quite possible that the US wouldn’t have been born.
What made me think about the lack of French scholars is that the documentary spends a good portion of it’s time talking about Ben Franklin being in France. They interview British and American scholars, have actors reenacting Franklin and the British ambassador, but no one portrays the French, and I can’t think of any documentary that I’ve seen which has French scholars.
Now, I realize that the American Revolution is little more than a footnote in British history, and probably rates as little in French history, but I’d think that at least some French scholars have studied it, and are experts in how France reacted to the efforts of Franklin to get the French to aid the Revolution. So why aren’t they featured in documentaries? (And now that I think about it, why aren’t the German scholars involved as well?)
Aw, come on, it can’t be something so stupid. It’s not like documentarians think that masses of English speaking folks will be watching their creation, and I’d think that a French scholar specializing in France’s contribution to the American Revolution would be inclined to learn English so that he/she could read the accounts of English speakers to France’s actions.
Actually SmackFu might have a point - the documentarians may have been uninterested in using interpreters for whatever reason.
Anyway, digging around I’ve found a fair number of 19th and early 20th century French titles related to the French involvement in the American Revolution, but fewer modern titles.
Patrick Villiers, more of a naval historian, is one, as in:
Le commerce colonial atlantique et la guerre d’Indépendance des Etats-Unis d’Amérique a été publié aux Etats-Unis. ( 1977, Arno Press ).
The Coursac brothers, Paul and Pierrette Girault de Coursac specifically, are a couple of more with Guerre d’Amérique et liberté des mers. ( 1991, Paris ). Though really the balance of their work seems more focused on Louis XVI.
So there are certainly French experts out there, but it really has traditionally been more a focus of American and British ( there was for example the whole “Imperial” school of revisionists ) historical enquiry. Digging up a French talking head or two may have seemed not worth the added hassle, however minimal.
Being able to read a foreign language doesn’t always mean that you can speak it fluently. Especially on camera.
I also suspect that Tamerlane is right that relatively few recent works have been published on the subject by French historians. As very broad generalisations, military history, colonial history, diplomatic history, British history and American history are all subjects that have long been rather unfashionable in French academic circles.
The most likely explanation of all, however, is that it just never occured to the programme makers. How realistic is it that whatever research their researchers had done had involved reading the recent secondary literature on the subject in French?
It could also be a budgetary matter: the English and American scholars and production crews had already tapped their funding and they couldn’t afford a French production crew.
If I had to guess I’d say “in France”. Many of the British scholars may have been teaching in American universities. If not PBS and the BBC cooperate often and it may not have cost much to sit a professor in front of a British camera and send the film back for editing. The bottom line is cost.
Another possible consideration is that I imagine most French scholars will look at the American Revolution and the French involvement with it, through the lens of how that set up the fall of the Monarchy, and the French Revolution. Which may not be the focus that the documentarians were looking to focus on.