Death to the French

About the Book

Schopenhauer observed that: "Every nation ridicules other nations and all are right.", and this expresses tolerably well the spirit in which Death to the French is written. It is a comprehensive record of the anniversary dates of British victories over the French, and there are 385 of them extending over nine centuries from 1106 to 1942. On the one hand these dates provide an opportunity for those so inclined to hold a celebratory party, and on the other they offer some factual evidence in explanation of the mutual, collective antipathy between the two countries.

The descriptions of the battles are much wider than the military details and include such matters as the poetry they have inspired including some French; poets who were combatants such as Chaucer who was captured and then ransomed while campaigning against the French; biographical notes about some of the participants, for example, the Israeli hero, Moshe Dayan, who was awarded the Military Cross and, like Nelson, lost an eye fighting the French; the young George Washington in command against the French under the flag of George III who won by means of a pre-emptive strike; and the man who Napoleon said "caused me to miss my destiny" – he was not Nelson or Wellington. Then there is recounted how the Black Prince's Ruby came to adorn the Imperial Crown; how the silver pot de chamber of Napoleon's brother, Joseph, the king of Spain is used for ceremonial champagne toasts at mess dinners by the regiment which looted it; the word diehard has entered the language; compositions by Handel and Beethoven that were inspired by British victories; the name of the boy who stood on the burning deck and where; women who were active combatants and on occasion gave birth during battles; the doctrine of the 'hot chase', a naval form of pre-emptive strike; and the famous French military engineer who proposed a single rate tax more than 250 years before Milton Friedman.. Perhaps most startling of all is that shortly after Napoleon had begun his military career in France, the Parliament of his native Corsica declared that all Corsicans were Englishmen and George III was King of Corsica. And there is much more of the same kind.

The anniversary dates are coordinated in the synopses of the seventeen wars in which the victories were won by means of cross-references.

Finally, it is cheerfully acknowledged in the Introduction that the subject is politically incorrect.

About the Author

Following education at Warwick School and the Universities of Edinburgh and London that was interrupted by several years of war service in the Royal Navy, mainly in motor torpedo boats, Philip White's career divides into two parts — twenty-two years as an academic and a similar period in business. Most of the former time was spent at the University of British Columbia to which he was appointed as professor to establish the urban land economics programme in what is now the Sauder School of Business. In the final seven years, he was the Dean of the Business School. The summation of this part of his career is an endowed chair in the School: "The Philip H. White Chair in Urban Land Economics".

An opportunity to prove that some of those who teach can also do came when he was invited to leave the University by a large, Canadian private trust in order to establish and direct a real estate development and investment programme in Europe. He continued in this work in the Netherlands, Germany, and Britain until he retired to Victoria.