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No, Perfidious Albion is the whole name, my French teacher said such capitalisation of adjectives wasn't done in French. Country names are a special case. It's

No, Perfidious Albion is the whole name, my French teacher said such capitalisation of adjectives wasn't done in French. Country names are a special case. It's certainly true that geonyms don't use capitals, in French: you'd say, I think, voitures français whilst we say French cars. (True?) If I referenced the Scottish Alliance [with France] (the Auld Alliance) then it's capitalised to show it's a specific reference, not just any old alliance. Bastiat isn't [just] calling Britain perfidious he's referencing a specific term (or I guess he's ignorant and this is a massive coincidence!?). I can't really add anything further. I'm open to being wrong.

Zababa 5y ago
The thing is that Albion alone is also a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion. Most of the references in the French wikipedia article on Perfidious Albion don't capitalize "Perfidious" either: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfide_Albion https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfide_Albion. > It's certainly true that geonyms don't use capitals, in French: you'd say, I think, voitures français whilst we say French cars. (True?) That's how it works I think (although we would say "voitures françaises" because "une voiture" is feminine but that's a detail). > If I referenced the Scottish Alliance [with France] (the Auld Alliance) then it's capitalised to show it's a specific reference, not just any old alliance. Bastiat isn't [just] calling Britain perfidious he's referencing a specific term (or I guess he's ignorant and this is a massive coincidence!?). That's true, but Albion by itself is also a reference, while Alliance by itself is not. For example, we also have the "Triple Alliance", which is another alliance, but we don't have another Albion. The perfidious Albion and Albion both refer to the same thing. I'm far from being an expert in French though, I'm only a native speaker, so I might be totally wrong about specific points like this.

Zababa 5y ago

The thing is that Albion alone is also a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion. Most of the references in the French wikipedia article on Perfidious Albion don't capitalize "Perfidious" either: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfide_Albion https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfide_Albion. > It's certainly true that geonyms don't use capitals, in French: you'd say, I think, voitures français whilst we say French cars. (True?) That's how it works I think (although we would say "voitures françaises" because "une voiture" is feminine but that's a detail). > If I referenced the Scottish Alliance [with France] (the Auld Alliance) then it's capitalised to show it's a specific reference, not just any old alliance. Bastiat isn't [just] calling Britain perfidious he's referencing a specific term (or I guess he's ignorant and this is a massive coincidence!?). That's true, but Albion by itself is also a reference, while Alliance by itself is not. For example, we also have the "Triple Alliance", which is another alliance, but we don't have another Albion. The perfidious Albion and Albion both refer to the same thing. I'm far from being an expert in French though, I'm only a native speaker, so I might be totally wrong about specific points like this.