Britain, France and the Entente Cordiale since 1904

236 Pages·2006·0.743 MB·English

by  Antoine Capet (eds.)

Studies in Military and Strategic History
William Philpott(General editor), Professor of Diplomatic History, King’s
College London
Published titles include:
Martin Alexander and William Philpott (editors)
ANGLO-FRENCH DEFENCE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE WARS
Christopher M. Bell
THE ROYAL NAVY, SEAPOWER AND STRATEGY BETWEEN THE WARS
Peter Bell
CHAMBERLAIN, GERMANY AND JAPAN, 1933–34
Antony Best
BRITISH INTELLIGENCE AND THE JAPANESE CHALLENGE IN ASIA, 1914–41
Antoine Capet (editor)
BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE ENTENTE CORDIALE SINCE 1904
Philippe Chassaigne and Michael Dockrill (editors)
ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS, 1898–1998
From Fashoda to Jospin
Michael Dockrill
BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT PERSPECTIVES IN FRANCE, 1936–40
Michael Dockrill and John Fisher
THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE, 1919
Peace without Victory?
John P. S. Gearson
HAROLD MACMILLAN AND THE BERLIN WALL CRISIS, 1958–62
John Gooch
ARMY, STATE AND SOCIETY IN ITALY, 1870–1915
G. A. H. Gordon
BRITISH SEA POWER AND PROCUREMENT BETWEEN THE WARS
A Reappraisal of Rearmament
Raffi Gregorian
THE BRITISH ARMY, THE GURKHAS AND COLD WAR STRATEGY IN
THE FAR EAST, 1947–1954
Stephen Hartley
THE IRISH QUESTION AS A PROBLEM IN BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY, 1914–18
Ashley Jackson
WAR AND EMPIRE IN MAURITIUS AND THE INDIAN OCEAN
James Levy
THE ROYAL NAVY’S HOME FLEET IN WORLD WAR II
Stewart Lone
JAPAN’S FIRST MODERN WAR
Army and Society in the Conflict with China, 1894–95
Thomas R. Mockaitis
BRITISH COUNTERINSURGENCY, 1919–60
Bob Moore and Kent Fedorowich
THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND ITS ITALIAN PRISONERS OF WAR, 1940–47
T. R. Moreman
THE ARMY IN INDIA AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF FRONTIER WARFARE,
1849–1947
Kendrick Oliver
KENNEDY, MACMILLAN AND THE NUCLEAR TEST-BAN DEBATE, 1961–63
Paul Orders
BRITAIN, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE
UNITED STATES, 1934–46
A Study in International History
Elspeth Y. O’Riordan
BRITAIN AND THE RUHR CRISIS
G. D. Sheffield
LEADERSHIP IN THE TRENCHES
Officer–Man Relations, Morale and Discipline in the British Army in the Era of
the First World War
Adrian Smith
MICK MANNOCK, FIGHTER PILOT
Myth, Life and Politics
Martin Thomas
THE FRENCH NORTH AFRICAN CRISIS
Colonial Breakdown and Anglo-French Relations, 1945–62
Simon Trew
BRITAIN, MIHAILOVIC AND THE CHETNIKS, 1941–42
Steven Weiss
ALLIES IN CONFLICT
Anglo-American Strategic Negotiations, 1938–44
Studies in Military and Strategic History
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Britain, France and the
Entente Cordiale since
1904
Edited by
Antoine Capet
Professor of British Studies, University of Rouen, France
Editorial matter,selection and Introduction © Antoine Capet 2006.
All remaining chapters © their respective authors 2006.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-0-230-00902-8
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Britain,France,and the Entente Cordiale since 1904/edited by Antoine Capet.
p.cm.-- (Studies in military and strategic history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Great Britain–foreign relations–France.2.France–Foreign relations–Great
Britain.3.Great Britain–Foreign relations–20th century.4.France–Foreign
relations–20th century.I.Capet,Antoine.II.Series:Studies in military and
strategic history (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))
DA47.1.B752006
327.41044--dc22
2006043616
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06
Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Introduction: ‘Britain’s most enduring Special
Relationship’ 1
Antoine Capet
1 ‘French people have a peculiar facility for being
misrepresented’: British Perceptions of France at
War, 1914–18 8
John Ramsden
2 Lloyd George and Clemenceau: Prima Donnas in
Partnership 28
Kenneth O. Morgan
3 Behind the Façade of the Entente Cordialeafter the
Great War 41
Robert Boyce
4 Entente and Argument: Britain, France and
Disarmament, 1899–1934 64
Andrew Webster
5 British Communists and Anglo-French Relations,
1914–45 78
Andrew Thorpe
6 Churchill and de Gaulle: Makers and Writers of
History 105
David Reynolds
7 The Singularity of Suez in Post-War Anglo-French
Relations:Une Entente mal entendue 124
Peter Catterall
8 De Gaulle and Anglo-French Mésentente, 1958–67 143
James Ellison
v
vi Contents
9 Franco-British Relations during the Wilson Years,
1964–70 162
John W. Young
10 From Heath to Thatcher, 1970–90 184
John Campbell
11 A Complex Alliance: The Explosive Chemistry of
Franco-British Relations in the Post-Cold War World 198
Klaus W. Larres
Index 219
Notes on Contributors
Robert Boyce teaches international history at the London School
of Economics. He has published several books including British
Capitalism at the Crossroads, 1919–1932: A Study in Politics, Economics
and International Relations (1987), (editor and translator), French
Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918–1940: The Decline and Fall of a Great
Power (1998), (edited with Joseph Maiolo), The Origins of World War
Two: The Debate Continues (2003), and some forty articles on aspects
of twentieth-century international economic and political history.
His new book, The Dual Crisis: The Collapse of the International
Economic and Political Systems between the Two World Wars, and the
Origins of Our Time, will be published soon.
John Campbellis a freelance political historian and biographer. His
books include Edward Heath, which won the 1994 NCR Award for
Non-Fiction, and two volumes on Margaret Thatcher, The Grocer’s
Daughter (2000) and The Iron Lady (2003). His latest, If Love Were All
...: The Story of Frances Stevenson and David Lloyd George, will be pub-
lished in 2006.
Antoine Capet, FRHistS, is Professor of British Studies at the
University of Rouen (France). His Doctorat d’État, on Le poids des
années de guerre: Les classes dirigeantes britanniques et la réforme sociale,
1931–1951, was published in book form in 1991. He is currently
‘Britain since 1914’ Section Editor of the Royal Historical Society
Bibliography and sits on the Editorial Committees of Cultural and
Social History and Twentieth Century British History. As head of the
CERCLA research group at Rouen, he has organised many confer-
ences with invited British scholars, notably one on Anglo-French
relations in 2004, from which this book is largely derived.
Peter Catterall teaches history and public policy both at the
Hansard Society and at Queen Mary, University of London, and
European Studies at Cass Business School. He has published extensive-
ly on twentieth-century British history, including the award-winning
vii
viii Notes on Contributors
British History 1945–1987: An Annotated Bibliography (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1990). The founder editor of National Identities, he also edit-
edContemporary British Historyfrom 1991 to 2003. Currently he is edit-
ing for publication the diaries of Harold Macmillan, the first volume
of which appeared in 2003.
James Ellison is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary
History at Queen Mary, University of London. He is a specialist on
Anglo-American and Anglo-European relations after 1945 and has a
specific interest in the history of the Cold War and European inte-
gration. Anglo-French relations are a particular theme in his
research as can be seen in his first book, Threatening Europe: Britain
and the Creation of the European Community, 1955–58 (London:
Macmillan, 2000). They are also an important feature of his next
book on Anglo-American relations and the Gaullist challenge of the
1960s.
Klaus Larres is Professor of History and International Affairs and
Director of Research at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland.
He is also a Distinguished Scholar at the Library of Congress in
Washington, DC, where he previously held the Henry A. Kissinger
Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations. He has
published widely on transatlantic relations, including Churchill’s Cold
War: The Politics of Personal Diplomacy (Yale University Press, 2002).
He currently works on a study of European-American relations
from the Cold War to the post-Cold War world and is completing
a book on Germany since World War II (Oxford University Press,
2008).
Kenneth O. Morgan was Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford,
1966–89, Vice-Chancellor in the University of Wales, 1989–95, and
since 2000 has been a Labour member of the House of Lords as Lord
Morgan of Aberdyfi. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy
in 1983. His twenty-five books on British and Welsh history include
six on Lloyd George. He has lectured widely in France and is attached
to the University of Rouen research school. His new biography of
Michael Foot for Harper Collins will be published shortly.
Notes on Contributors ix
John Ramsden is Professor of Modern History at Queen Mary,
University of London. He has contributed all three twentieth-centu-
ry volumes to the Longman History of the British Conservative Party,
and published in 2001 a single-volume history of the Party, An
Appetite for Power. In 2003 he produced Man of the Century: Winston
Churchill and his Legend since 1945, a book on The Dam Bustersfilm of
1955, and (as General Editor) the Oxford Companion to 20th-Century
British Politics. His study of British views of twentieth-century
Germany, Don’t Mention the War, appeared in May 2006.
David Reynoldsis Professor of International History at Cambridge
University and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author or
editor of ten books including Britannia Overruled: British Policy and
World Power in the Twentieth Century (1991), The Origins of the Cold
War in Europe (editor, 1994), and In Command of History: Churchill
Fighting and Writing the Second World War(2004), which was awarded
the Wolfson History Prize.
Andrew Thorpe is Professor of Modern British History at the
University of Exeter, UK. His publications include The British General
Election of 1931 (Clarendon Press, 1991), Britain in the 1930s
(Blackwell, 1992), A History of the British Labour Party(1997; 2nd edn,
Palgrave, 2001), and The British Communist Party and Moscow,
1920–1943(Manchester University Press, 2000). He is currently com-
pleting a monograph on party organisation in Second World War
Britain for Oxford University Press.
Andrew Webster is the European Union Centre Lecturer in
Modern European History at Murdoch University, Perth, Western
Australia. His Ph.D. dissertation at Cambridge University was on
‘Anglo-French relations and the problems of disarmament and secu-
rity, 1929–1933’ (2001). He has published several articles on Anglo-
French relations and the disarmament process between the world
wars, and is presently writing a history of international disarmament
between 1899 and 1945.
John W. Young holds the Chair of International History at the
University of Nottingham. He is the author of Britain, France and the