France has spent half a century being like “Look at me, I can offer nuclear umbrella, and also sell modern weapons, who need the crazy US when you can have me”, and is finally hoping to score !
yes, France has won a lot of wars. France and England basically divided most of the world between themselves at one point. Germany being a distant runner up.
But on the other hand Groundskeeper Willie on The Simpsons said a funny thing one time so Americans now think they must be wimps.
It is a whole lot more complicated than a Simpsons joke. While it is still pretty much completely unwarranted, French bashing has been a thing that started way earlier in history. Check this Reddit thread for a well documented summary : https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/vmkpr1/when_...
No, it's a joke about how Americans are so ignorant about history and the rest of the world that they form their worldview entirely based on memes and pop-culture references, and the Simpsons is where the phrase "cheese eating surrender-monkeys" came from.
Americans vaguely know from war movies that they capitulated to the Nazis and then the US (and the US alone, of course) had to come rescue them, and that they refused to participate in the US's illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, which then led to a propaganda campaign against France, including Freedom Fries and other nonsense. (France absolutely did partake in the war in Afghanistan, deploying several thousand troops in 2001, so nobody can say they didn't come to aid when requested.)
You mean the cultural war between Britain and France that lasted hundreds of years? Yeah pretty sure the Anglo world won that one. Since you are writing in English in an internet forum and all
No, I meant the Norman conquest (conquête) in 1066, in which the English aristocracy (aristocratie) was replaced (remplacé) by French warlords, who kept speaking French until well in the 14th century, and changed the English language (langue) beyond recognition (reconnaissance), to the extent that Dutch or Scandinavian speakers find it easier to understand Old English than English ones do.
You might view the Hundred Year War as quarrels (querelles) of different (différent) branches (branches) of the French aristocracy.
Therefore, the current (courant) Anglo-Saxon hegemony (hégémonie) has its roots in France.
