Perfidious Albion
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"Perfidious Albion" is a hostile epithet for England or the United Kingdom: Perfidious signifies one who does not keep his faith or word, while Albion is an ancient name for Great Britain.
The use of the adjective "perfidious" to describe Britain has a long history; instances have been found as far back as the 13th century.[1] A very similar phrase was used in a sermon by the eminent seventeenth century French bishop, preacher and theologian Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet:
"L'Angleterre, ah, la perfide Angleterre, que le rempart de ses mers rendait inaccessible aux Romains, la foi du Sauveur y est abordee."
"England, ah, faithless England, which was rendered inaccesible to the Romans by rampart of her seas, the faith of the Saviour spread even there."
The Catholic Bishop's reference is to England's lack of loyalty to the Catholic faith: although England received the Catholic faith from Rome in the time of Pope Gregory the Great despite its isolation, since the Reformation it had rejected Catholicism and become a Protestant country.
The coinage of the phrase in its current form, however, is conventionally attributed to Augustin, Marquis of Ximenez, a Frenchman of Spanish origin, who in a 1793 poem wrote
- Attaquons dans ses eaux la perfide Albion
which means "Let us attack perfidious Albion in her waters". In this context, Britain's perfidy was political: in the early days of the French Revolution many in Britain, the most liberal of the European monarchies, had looked upon the Revolution with mild favour, but as the Revolution had become more extreme Britain had allied herself with the other monarchies of Europe against the Revolution in France. This was seen by the revolutionaries in France as a "perfidious" betrayal.
The phrase gained prominence in France during the French Revolution, and subsequently spread to other countries at times when their relations with Britain were poor: for example, it was used in German propaganda during the two World Wars.[1] The idea was often used on the Continent during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to express resentment at alleged British hypocrisy: Britain often maintained an idealistic self-image of "fair play" and mild liberal idealism in its foreign relations, but its detractors claimed it was just as ruthless and self-interested as any other European power, if not more so. The justice of this accusation, is, of course, debatable.
Today it is a conventional Anglophobic epithet, used in many anti-British contexts, and largely divorced from its historic origins; for example, it is used by Argentinians in the context of the long-standing football rivalry between Argentina and England, and is used in popular culture (such as in the video game Rise of Nations - Thrones and Patriots) to establish characters' anti-British sentiments.
