Americans in France

Unofficial figures indicate that up to 50,000 free blacks emigrated to Paris from Louisiana in the decades after Napoleon sold the territory to the United States in 1803.[2]

Paris was the art capital of the world in the nineteenth century and has attracted painters, sculptors, and architects from around the world including the United States.[3] In the decades following the American Civil War, hundreds of Americans joined the throngs headed to Paris. American artists, who formed the largest contingent of foreign painters and sculptors in Paris, were only one segment of the capital's extensive American colony, which also included writers, businessmen, diplomats, and others in more-or-less permanent residence.

Many American artists stayed together, and enclaves of them developed on the Left Bank, along the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and near the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian's headquarters. Although some lived in Paris for long periods—even the rest of their lives—most insisted on identifying themselves as American.

Officers of the American Expeditionary Forces and the Baker mission

During the United States campaigns in World War I the American Expeditionary Forces fought in France alongside British and French allied forces in the last year of the war, against Imperial German forces. The first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France at the port of Saint Nazaire and by May 1918 over one million U.S. troops were stationed in France, half of them being on the front lines.[4]

In the aftermath of World War I, when about 200,000 were brought over to fight, Paris began to have an African-American community. Ninety per cent of these soldiers were from the American South.[2] France was viewed by many African Americans as a welcome change after incidents of racism in the United States. Beginning in the 1920s, U.S. intellectuals, painters, writers, and tourists were drawn to French art, literature, philosophy, theatre, cinema, fashion, wines, and cuisine. It was during this time that jazz was introduced to the French and black culture was born in Paris.

With the defeat and dismantling of Austria at the end of World War I, Paris replaced Vienna as the cultural capital of Europe, if not of the world. Many foreigners settled in Paris during this period, some briefly and some long-term, some exiles and some voluntary, because of Paris's tolerance for unorthodox sexuality, politics, and art. The movement built on itself, as the more intellectuals and artists moved to Paris, the more attraction it had for others. Among the Americans living in Paris during this period are Paul Bowles, Aaron Copland, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Alice B. Toklas.

When France officially declared war on Germany in September 1939, as a response to the Third Reich's invasion of Poland, an estimated 30,000 Americans lived in or near Paris.[5] Although that declaration was followed by roughly nine-months of what often was called the "phony war" or "drôle de guerre," the inevitability of coming conflict led most of those expatriates to leave France while they could.

In June 1940, the inevitable occurred with massive German attacks and after scarcely three weeks of battle, Nazi troops marched uncontested through the gates of Paris and some 5,000 Americans still were in the French capital. For various reasons, such as family ties and professional obligations, they had chosen to remain in Paris. At that moment, the United States was not at war, however, and not militarily allied with anyone. It was still a neutral nation. German occupying forces were legally obligated to treat U.S. citizens better than French nationals even though many were bi-nationals with French passports as well as American ones.

Americans who stayed in the capital endured most of the shortages and hardships of their French neighbors but to some extent for nearly a year and a half they were not imprisoned by German occupying authorities. However, their lives were not easy and often tragic, in particular for African-Americans and Jewish Americans who were frequently singled out by the Nazis for harsher than normal treatment. Because the United States still remained neutral, the German occupying forces at first allowed long-standing institutions in the French capital such as the American hospital, the American library, the American church, the American Chamber of Commerce as well as various others of a commercial or charitable nature to remain open.

When the United States entered the war, it led to a clamp down on U.S. citizens in German-occupied northern France. Many were rounded up and sent to internment camps. Those who were not still were obligated to report regularly to German occupying authorities or French police. Internments applied initially only to men although, in September, 1942, German authorities began to intern American women as well.

Many American students have been flocking to France for further education following the aftermath of the Second World War. In 2007–2008, more than 17,000 Americans studied in France as undergraduate and graduate students, a number which represented a 46 percent increase since 2001.[6]