All the cultural arguments for the success of the United States - that America got England’s most adventurous, risk-taking, and free-thinking people - apply equally to England and France. England was conquered in 1066 by presumably some of the most adventurous people in France, and for centuries kept receiving waves of French dissidents, especially the Huguenots and refugees from the French Revolution.

Inspired by a line from Shakespeare’s Henry V, where the French nobles mock the English for being “bastard Normans, an effusion of France’s luxury”. Sounds a lot like describing America as Albion’s Seed.