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Originally Posted by Nimetic
Seems true. The British empire was bigger I thought - and turned out better in the longer term it seems.
The French have no equivalent of Canada, India, Australia.... New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore... er... Hong Kong. That I can think of.
But not to hold this against them. It's a historical quirk probably. The brits had various advantages arising from living on an island.
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Untrue...the French once had an empire nearly as large as the British had. Canada belonged to France first, after all, and they DID sell a rather large portion of territory in the Louisiana Purchase. In the post-colonial era, though, they gave a lot of their territories independence, but they still have territories throughout the world, including significant portions of Polynesia and the Caribbean. As a result of this, French is still widely spoken in some parts of Africa and Southeast Asia.
It is hard to quantify the influence that the French have had on worldwide culture, but they have had an enormous influence on American culture, whether we realize it or not. France was the first country the United States had diplomatic relations with, and that had a strong effect on our early government, and our ideals (France was the home of the Enlightenment, after all), an influence that remains today.
I could write an entire essay on this--in fact, somewhere I have a 14-page paper on how the French have influenced American fashion, in particular the fashions of Worth and Chanel. A great book to read on the influence of Paris on Americans is Seductive Journey: American Tourists in Paris From Jefferson to the Jazz Age:
http://www.amazon.com/Seductive-Jour...1539848&sr=8-3
It does an excellent job of explaining exactly why Paris is a cultural powerhouse, why France has enjoyed the influence Paris exerts on the rest of the world, and precisely how much American culture has been affected by the French.