The English political model in eighteenth-century France*

Abstract

Abstract This article, based on French archives and political pamphlets, challenges the traditional assumption that political anglophilia in France was limited to intellectual or opposition circles. During the Seven Years’ War, French official propaganda changed its strategy. Ministerial writers gave information on British politics by publishing translations of English pamphlets or newspapers. An official model even appeared at the end of the war, praising British patriotism. However, during the last decades of the ancien re??gime, radicalism tarnished England's reputation, foreshadowing the failure in 1789 of a political solution inspired by the English.