ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the different angles taken by those who advocate a stronger Europe, a handful of opponents to an agenda, and the representations of Europe and the United States that have motivated this call for a European power. It consequently survey French scholarship over several centuries to discern the way in which representations of the US are bound up in representations of Europe and vice versa. The US provides French intellectuals with a vehicle for envisioning France's future and an incentive for the "European project" – the motivation and the model for a united Europe. The French Revolution intervened in these perceptions in two ways. First, it reduced the need for foreign political models. Second, Americans demonstrated a maddening degree of indifference to the onslaught from the various monarchies of Europe from the time of the Revolution through the Napoleonic era.
