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The success of jazz in France in the 1950s resulted from both pro-American sentiment following the Liberation and, paradoxically, Cold War anti-Americanism, which was then in full swing. This ambivalence illustrates the complexity of certain acculturation-linked phenomena whereby the imported object is sometimes reinterpreted by the host country, the latter then transforming it into a symbol of resistance to the cultural invaders. Anthropologists have defined this process as “counter-acculturation.” The history of jazz in France can be looked at from such a viewpoint, since French acculturation of American jazz was marked by a specific form of intellectualization : After welcoming it as an object of admiration in the 1930s, the French used it during the Cold War to show the superiority of a dismantled Europe over a dominating America. This process will be referred to here as “counter-Americanization.”