Jeez I wish I hadn't brought up France now, it was really only a tongue in cheek flip at French pretentions.
Do the French actually dislike Americans? Well I'm sure most don't and any anti-American rhetoric tends to come from French politicians and is directed towards American foreign policy. But some definitely have a chip on their shoulder over America and the English speaking world, and I don't know if it can be blamed on a cultural inferiority complex or just plain resentment.
My own simple theory is that many French believe that France and the French language and culture should have become the dominant force in western culture that the Anglo-phone world has become.
Throughout the 18th Century France was probably the most powerful country in the western world and France was building a world wide empire even before the French revolution. It all reached its apex with the rise of Napoleon. Every were outside of Europe France was defeated by Britain (the America's, Egypt, India), and Napoleon was finally beaten by a coalition led by a British general.
Up until the 19th Century French was undisputably the language of diplomacy and was the main language of most courts in Europe. That all changed in the 19th Century as the British Empire eclipsed France in international prestige and power, and English gradually began to replace French as the dominant international language. By the early-to-mid 20th Century America had taken over the lead from Britain, but English continued to become even more dominant.
The rise of Germany in Europe only made things worse for France, as the French where being challenged and dominated by a newly unified culture who France had dominated for centuries before in Europe, but France also had to be bailed out and rescued by the same culture which had surplanted its own on the international stage.
Persieved slights and heavy handed American foreign diplomacy, and British before it, haven't helped things, but basically I think its just down to resentment.
Just a theory.
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