FRANCE AND BRITAIN 1900-1940:
ENTENTE AND ESTRANGEMENT
France and Britain 1900-1940
Entente and Estrangement
P. M. H. Bell
First published 1996
by Longman Group Limited
Published 2013
by Routledge
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Copyright 1996, Taylor & Francis.
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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-22953-2 (pbk)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bell, P. M. H. (Philip Michael Hett). 1930
France and Britain, 1900-1940: entente and estrangement /
P.M.H. Bell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-582-22954-5 (csd). - ISBN 0-582-22953-7 (ppr)
1. FranceForeign relations1870-1940. 2. FranceForiegn
relationsGreat Britain. 3. Great BritainForeign relations
France. I. Title.
DC59.8.G7B45 1996
327.44041dc20 95-41012
CIP
Contents
The subject of this book has been near the centre of my intellectual life for many years, ever since I first embarked on university teaching and research. In this I am far from alone: relations between France and Britain, and their views of one another across the Channel, impinge on many aspects of academic work, and (far more widely) engage the interest of many Britons who live, work or take their holidays in France. The book has also been a labour of love. I write as a devoted and patriotic Englishman with a deep and abiding affection for France, and I hope this book will appeal to all those who share these attributes. After all, it has been wisely said that every civilised man has two countries: his own and France.
In writing this book, I have incurred many obligations. Most of the personal ones I prefer to acknowledge privately; but I owe a special debt to those friends who have read drafts, with keen eyes and careful judgement, and usually in the midst of heavy work of their own. I am deeply grateful to David Dutton, John Lukacs, Ralph White and Charles Williams for all their comments and advice. Among institutions, the University of Liverpool allowed me a year's study leave to work on this book; the British Academy and the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France awarded me research grants which assisted that work. To these bodies I am most grateful.
Much of the research, reading and writing has been accomplished during long residence in Paris, I was made most welcome by French historians, and learned much in seminars and even more from conversation.
From a life-time's enthusiasm and activity, there is much archival research behind this book; but even so, by its very nature, it is primarily a work of synthesis. My main intellectual debts are to those who have worked in the field before me, and I gladly offer my recognition in the bibliographical essay. Reference notes are mostly used to give sources for quotations and statistics. Quotations from French sources have been translated, usually by my wife. Much more important, it was my wife who introduced me to France many years ago; and she has shared the work and the delight of this book from start to finish.
Another book, already well advanced, will take the story or relations between France and Britain, and their views of one another, from 1940 to as near the present day as can be managed.
P. M. H. Bell
Paris and Kew
1994-95
Attitudes and Landmarks
Nations reveal much about themselves in their relations with one another. Jules Michelet, that great patriotic French historian, wrote in his Tableau de la France:
The struggle against England has done France a very great service by confirming and clarifying her sense of nationhood. Through coming together against the enemy the provinces discovered that they were a single people. It is by seeing the English close to, that they felt that they were France. It is the same with nations as with the individual; he gets to know and defines his personality through resistance to what is different from himself. He becomes conscious of what he is through what he is not.
The main thread of this book is relations between France and Britain as states political, military and economic; but always intertwined with that thread there runs the theme of each country's understanding of the other, and of itself in relation to the other.
The period from 1900 to 1940 was one of close relations between France and Britain as states. It was marked near the beginning by the conclusion of the agreement of April 1904 which is always known as the Entente cordiale, a name which has entered the vocabulary of both countries, and whose persistence is a tribute to the power of words. There followed the common struggle and immense sacrifice of the Great War of 1914-18. Thereafter, despite much friction, each country continued to believe that in the last resort it could count on the support of the other in a war against Germany; and indeed the conflict was renewed in 1939.
In the nature of things, this was not the whole story. Relations with Germany were not clear-cut or static. It was again Michelet, reflecting on the influence of geography, who wrote that: 'Germany is not opposed to France, rather is she parallel to her.' There was truth in this, even in the period marked by great Franco-German wars; and there were significant signs of understanding between the two countries, particularly in economic affairs. Equally there were times when Britain sought to act as mediator between France and Germany, or even took the side of Germany against France. At the same time, another triangular relationship took shape, between Britain, France and the United States. Here, the usual alignment tended to be one of Britain and the USA over against France. Despite much friction between the British and Americans, the French certainly believed in an Anglo-Saxon combination against them, in politics, economics and not least cultural matters. The French language was constantly losing ground to the growing influence of English a cause of lasting chagrin to many Frenchmen.
