Episode 017: François Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French

by Liz CovartFebruary 17, 2015

Play episode

Parlez-vous Français?

Do you speak French?

Believe it or not, in the 1790s many Americans spoke French. They may not have spoken the French language, but they understood and embraced French culture, art, and culinary traditions.

Early Americans experimented with and adopted many forms of French culture as they sought to define their new identity as Americans.

François Furstenberg, Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and author of When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees Who Shaped a Nation, joins us to explore how and why the United States spoke French during the 1790s.

About the Show

Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.

It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.

Each episode features a conversation with an historian who helps us shed light on important people and events in early American history.

Episode Summary

In this episode, we explore how the United States came to speak French with François Furstenberg, Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins and author of When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees Who Shaped a Nation.

François leads us on an exploration of France, the United States, and Haiti during the 1790s and early 1800s.

Throughout our voyage, François reveals how five French aristocrats and early leaders of the French Revolution came to settle in the United States during the 1790s; How those five Frenchmen and their fellow exiles influenced American art, culinary tastes, fashion, politics, and culture; and why so many early Americans used French culture to help them define their early identity as Americans.

As a bonus, François also shares how Napoléon Bonaparte almost settled the Louisiana Territory instead of selling it to Thomas Jefferson and the United States in 1803.

What You’ll Discover

How François came to study the lives of 5 early leaders of the French Revolution
A brief overview of the French Revolution
Why aristocrats and early French revolutionaries such as Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the duc de Liancourt, Louis-Marie Vicomte de Noailles, Moreau de Saint-Méry, and the Comte Volney fled to the United States instead of seeking safety in other parts of Europe
Why so many French refugees chose to settle in Philadelphia
What Philadelphia looked like in the 1790s
The activities the French aristocrats undertook upon their arrival in Philadelphia
How the French refugees influenced American art, culinary tastes, fashion, and culture
Why Americans used French culture to help them define their early identity as Americans
How some of the French refugees gained access to influential early Americans such as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson
Letters of introduction and how they facilitated travel during the 18th and early-19th centuries
Whether the French émigrés attempted to influence the politics of the United States
Goals and provisions of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce (1778)
Brief overview of the Haitian Revolution and its connections with the French Revolution
The French purchase of the Louisiana Territory and their attempt to settle it in 1801/1802