| abstract
| - The rivalry and cultural differences between Gauls and Germans – the pre-Roman cultures that gradually evolved into France and Germany – were noted by Julius Caesar in his On The Gallic War. Romans, Carthaginians and many other cultures frequently employed Gaul tribesmen as guides and translators. The Gauls frequently raided Roman territory, most spectacularly in 397 BC, seizing Rome itself after the Battle of the Allia and accepting a sizeable ransom for the release of the city. Gaul itself had strategic importance both because of its geographic position as well as a source of revenue, mercenaries and slaves. The Germanic tribes, by contrast, remained more isolated and fractious. Germany lay further from the Roman domain and was well-protected by the strong natural barriers of the Alps, the Rhine and Danube rivers, and the dense forests. Therefore, the expanding Roman Empire turned its attentions to Gaul first, culminating in Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul in 50 BC. Because of its closer proximity to Rome and less formidable geographic obstacles, Rome was able to consolidate its control of Gaul. For the next three centuries, until the Crisis of the Third Century, Gaul was an integral part of the Roman Empire. Gaul gradually became Romanized, its people adopting Roman customs and melding their own indigenous tongues with Latin to produce Old French, which through the Middle Ages evolved into French. Germany, on the other hand, was never fully Romanized. Western Germany, known to the Romans as Germania, was not integrated into the Empire until the 1st century AD, and the Romans gave up trying to conquer and Romanize the eastern half of Germany after the disastrous Battle of Teutoburg Forest. Cultural differences between the Gauls and Germans conspired with the dramatically different extent of Romanization to establish the two cultures as distinct and discrete entities during the late Roman Empire and early Middle Ages. The Franks, themselves a Germanic tribe, abandoned much of the linguistic and cultural legacy of their Germanic forbears after having conquered Gaul and in time became distinct from other Germanic tribes east of the Rhine. The Carolingian Empire established in 800 by Charlemagne achieved a transitory political unity, but the death of Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious marked its demise, as in 843 the Carolingian realm was divided into three parts by the Treaty of Verdun. Short-lived Middle Francia, the weak central part under Emperor Lothair I, was soon split again. Its northern Lotharingia part on both sides of the language border became a bone of contention between the western and eastern kingdoms that developed into the modern nations of France and Germany. France maintained a much more outward-looking geopolitical role through the Middle Ages, fighting wars against the Spanish and British that ultimately defined the nation's identity as a politically integrated and discrete unit, and occupying an important role as Europe's largest, most powerful and most populous Christian nation. For these reasons, French gradually supplanted Latin as the common language of international diplomacy and culture. Germany, on the other hand, remained more inward-looking. The rapid ascent of Prussia and later Germany during the 19th and the early 20th centuries altered the balance of power between the two nations. This gave rise to an existential change in the nature of their relationship, increasingly defined by mutually hostile modern nationalism. Writers, historians and politicians in both countries tended to project their enmity backwards, regarded all history as a single, coherent and unbroken narrative of ongoing conflict, and reinterpreted the earlier history to fit into the concept of a "hereditary enmity".
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