An Uphill Struggle: The British fight for the future of France (original) (raw)
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Abstract
Britain and France have long been intertwined, their history is so linked that the two may be more deserving of the 'Special Relationship' moniker than the relationship between Britain and the United States. This paper examines how the British tried to forge a role for France in the World after its defeat in 1940, how they butted heads with America repeatedly over this policy course, and how, eventually, they secured their aims.
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Why have the French been wary of British involvement in Europe between 1945-1975?
In the post-war years of Britain and France initially found solace in each other's colonial despair as their empires and imperial hegemony crumbled before them. The French relationship with Britain in the period followed no clear narrative. French wariness in the post-war period had at its origins in imperial distrust, economic divergence and most significantly in the personal Anglophobia of the great political titan, Charles de Gaulle. His role in vetoing British entry to Europe was paramount and his true influence is clear by the rapid reverse in France's political opposition to Britain's role in Europe after his resignation. No two powers had greater mutual rivalry and often enmity than Britain and France. Their shared history had largely been marked by a thousand years of conflict and centuries of imperial distrust. The imperial distrust was exacerbated by failed post war imperial partnership in Algeria and Suez. This was significant in explaining French wariness to Britain's partnership in Europe. This historic distrust with Britain cannot be understated. Winston Churchill himself admitted that "Throughout the medieval history of England war with France is the interminable and often the dominant theme" 1 Indeed the military historian Jock Haswell highlighted it was the English, it must be remembered, that martyred the very symbol of France. 2 The 19-year-old saviour and heroine of France, Joan of Arc. A figure whose name still graced the main officer training ship of the French navy from 1912 to 2010. 3 However, it was the imperial dimension in the years following the Second World War that led to increased French wariness of British involvement in Europe. Britain's imperial duplicity and unreliability tarnished their reputation as imperial partners and potential European partners. The British damaged their diplomatic influence with France over their stance to the Algerian War. Britain's failure to publically support the French government's actions in Algeria was marked with suspicion. The French Foreign Minister, Christian Pineau, suggested to the Anglo-American Press Association in March 1956 that Britain's inaction was prompted by imperial cupidity and that "her allies were tempted by opportunities of inheriting French interests in the region if she were forced to withdraw" 4 This feeling grew when news was published that Britain and America intended to sell arms to Tunisia. There was a significant anti-Anglo Saxon backlash as France had earlier refused to sell arms to Tunisia as they feared they would be resold to Algerian nationalists. This perceived 'stab in back' led to crowds in Paris shouting 'To the gallows with Macmillan' on the 25 th November 1957. 5 The British undermined their imperial relationship with France in the Maghreb over Algeria but it was in Egypt where they would break any aspiration for imperial partnership. Despite reservations over Algeria, the French administration of Guy Mollet was committed to intervening in Egypt with British partnership. The Suez Crisis would prove to be the peripeteia in Franco-British relations as France abandoned aspirations of a Franco-British 'third force' and moved towards European integration without Britain. According to the former British Ambassador in Paris, Lord Gladwyn, the French felt cruelly betrayed and let down by their British allies over Suez. 6 Not only had the British forces failed to perform militarily, they were seen to lack resolve and crumble too quickly under American pressure. The political department of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs were blunt. Britain had shown herself to be "hesitant in action, maladroit in execution and infirm of purpose when it counted" They continued that the Ministry no longer believed in the Franco-English magic formula as a serious international contender. 7 In short at the most crucial of moments the British chose the special relationship with America over their entente with France.
Introduction: France, 1940-1944: The Ambiguous Legacy
Contemporary French Civilization, 2007
In his last work of non-fiction The Drowned and the Saved, Holocaust survivor and renowned autobiographer Primo Levi devotes an entire chapter to what he refers to as "the gray zone." Drawing a parallel with power structures in Nazi extermination camps-where some detainees were forced to work for their captors-Levi describes the hierarchies inside collaborating governments during World War II, where individuals from defeated countries worked in the service of German aggressors. Levi writes that those collaborating individuals and administrations inhabit that "gray zone," which is "where the two camps of masters and servants both diverge and converge" (42).
A brief review cannot do justice to this rich and engaging work that, while breaking little new ground, is a worthwhile synthesis based on the latest scholarship. The authors are married couple Robert and Isabelle Tombs; he, born in England, teaches at Cambridge University and has authored numerous works on France; she, born in France, teaches French at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Inspired by the recent centenary of the 1904 Entente Cordiale, the authors have written a book that examines Britain and France and "what arises from or affects their mutual contact" (xxiv) from the Second Hundred Years' War (1688-1815), through the 19th Century and two world wars, and up to the 2005 French No vote on the European Constitution.
France 1939–1945: From strange defeat to pseudo‐liberation
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This essay provides a class‐analysis interpretation of France's role in World War II. Determined to eliminate the perceived revolutionary threat emanating from its restless working class, France's elite arranged in 1940 for the country to be defeated by its “external enemy,” Nazi Germany. The fruit of that betrayal was a victory over its “internal enemy,” the working class. It permitted installing a fascist regime under Pétain, and this “Vichy‐France”—like Nazi Germany—was a paradise for the industrialists and all other members of the upper class, but a hell for workers and other plebeians. Unsurprisingly, the Resistance was mostly working‐class, and its plans for postwar France included severe punishment for the collaborators and very radical reforms. After Stalingrad, the elite, desperate to avoid that fate, switched its loyalty to the country's future American masters, who were determined to make France and the rest of Europe free for capitalism. It proved necessary, however, to allow the recalcitrant leader of the conservative Resistance, Charles de Gaulle, to come to power. In any event, the “Gaullist” compromise made it possible for the French upper class to escape punishment for its pro‐Nazi sins and to maintain its power and privileges after the liberation.
The Reluctant Atlanticist: France's Security and Defence Policy in a Transatlantic Context
2016
This article introduces the key tenets of French foreign and security policy during the Cold War, and illustrates the deep challenges to the French consensus raised by the emergence of a unipolar system. There is a growing gap between the rhetoric of French security policy, emphasizing ‘autonomy’ and ‘sovereignty’ out of habit from the Cold War, and the actual security practices showing a gradual embedding within the transatlantic security structures. In the absence of a new transpartisan grand narrative relevant for the contemporary international system, such embedding is easily portrayed in France as a ‘treason’ from a romanticized Gaullist foreign policy.
France and the Origins of the First World War
1983
This series of specially commissioned titles focuses attention on significant and often controversial events and themes of world history in the present century. Each book provides sufficient narrative and explanation for the newcomer to the subject while offering, for more advanced study, detailed source-references and bibliographies, together with interpretation and reassessment in the light of recent scholarship. In the choice of subjects there is a balance between breadth in some spheres and detail in others; between the essentially political and matters economic or social. The series cannot be a comprehensive account of everything that has happened in the twentieth century, but it provides a guide to recent research and explains something of the times of extraordinary change and complexity in which we live. It is directed in the main to students of contemporary history and international relations, but includes titles which are of direct relevance to courses in economics, sociology, politics and geography.
The British left intelligentsia and France : perceptions and interactions, 1930-1944
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This thesis is concerned with the ways in which the non-communist British left interacted with their French counterparts during the 1930s and the Second World War and described France in their writings and broadcasts. It challenges existing accounts that have described British attitudes to France as characterised by suspicion, ill-feeling or even contempt. It draws on a range of sources, including reportage, private papers, records of left-wing societies and other publications from the period, as well as relevant articles and books. The thesis explores the attitudes of British left-wing intellectuals, trade unionists and politicians and investigates their attempts to find common ground and formulate shared aspirations. The thesis takes a broadly chronological approach, looking first at the pre-1939 period, then at three phases of war and finally at British accounts of the Liberation of France. In the 1930s, British left-wing commentators sought to explain events in France and to work with French socialists and trade unionists in international forums in their search for an appropriate response to both fascism and Soviet communism. Following the defeat of France, networks that included figures from the British left and French socialists living in London in exile developed. In addition to print media, broadcasting provided a space in which the left intelligentsia could promote a version of current events that emphasized solidarity between a determined Britain and defiant French resistance, united in a common endeavour. Contributors showed continued interests in French affairs, discussing issues such as communism, social and economic reform, colonialism, the future of Europe and how France might best be governed. The analysis of the primary sources presented in this thesis provides a counter narrative to a more orthodox position which has emphasised enmity and hostility between the Britain and France during this period and makes a contribution to a more complete understanding of cross Channel relations before and during the Second World War.
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