Secret admirers: Frogs and rosbifs

The relationship between Britain and France, in business as in so many other things, seems always to have been built on incomprehension, or at least on very different points de vue. The two former great colonial powers are said to have built their empires on very different institutional models, for example: trading posts or comptoirs de commerce for the British Empire, schools and cultural centres for the French. In other words the Frogs did it for la gloire, while the British just ventured abroad to make money.

Yet ever since the Industrial Revolution, these two ancient enemies have been co-operating widely with each other in trade, transfer of technology, business investment and, more recently, in the exchange of large numbers of managers and young workers. But can we ever really understand each other?

Well, recent history is full of examples of successful co-operation between the Frogs and the rosbifs, the most famous of all being Concorde.