Diplomacy and the History of International Relations: Redefining a Conflictual Relationship

diplomatica 1 (2019) 33-39

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Laurence Badel Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, France [email protected]

Abstract

Because of Pierre Renouvin’s key role in defining the history of international relations, French historians have long nurtured a complex relationship with this academic field. Since the early 2000s, there has been a new commitment in this field, marked by both a sociological and cultural approach.

Keywords

P. Renouvin – Annales School – J.-B. Duroselle – diplomatic history – international relations

Diplomacy occupies a simple, and yet complex place in the history of international relations, particularly in France. More than in other countries, undoubt- edly, the majority of French historians have, with rare exceptions, long kept away from this field of research as they were deeply concerned, in a more or less conscious way, about a new assimilation to an object, diplomatic history, conceived as an interstate history, with which Pierre Renouvin, the “founding father” of the History of International Relations defined as a history of relations between peoples, had wanted to break. Pierre Renouvin’s successor at the Sorbonne, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, wrote the history of the break-up: focusing his attention on the four volumes written by Renouvin himself in the Histoire des relations internationales, published between 1953 and 1958 by Ha- chette, he comments emphatically: “Comparing his four volumes to Emile Bourgeois’s Manuel d’histoire de politique étrangère actually means moving

34 Badel into another universe. From a two-dimensional world, we move on to the three-dimensional universe.”1 Emile Bourgeois’s Manuel historique de politique étrangère, whose four volumes were released between 1893 and 1926, Albert Sorel’s L’Europe et la Révolution française, published in nine volumes between 1865 and 1911, and Antonin Debidour’s Histoire diplomatique de l’Europe, which came out in two volumes between 1891 and 1916, were the three reference works in the history of international relations in France, under the Third Re- public and until the early 1950s.

The Dramatization of Distance

The History of International Relations coordinated by Pierre Renouvin, and published by Hachette between 1953 and 1958, represented an actual break insofar as it sought to embrace a plurality of factors to explain the evolution of relations between peoples. But this rupture was the subject of a linear dis- course, enclosing the new discipline in a reductive face-to-face confrontation. Just as the opposition between “New Diplomacy” and the “Old Diplomacy” of the 19th century had been conceptualized by the diplomats who had experi- enced the 1919 Paris Peace Conference to eventually become a cliché of the histories of diplomacy until the 2000s,2 so the history of international relations was presented as the inverted and positive image of the “old diplomatic history.” Robert Frank, holder of the Chair in the history of international relations at the Sorbonne from 1994 to 2012, still speaks teleologically of a “reflection begun in 1931, clarified in 1934 with the explicit mention of ‘underlying forces’ (the so-called forces profondes), developed in [a] text of 1953, [and which] finds its culmination in 1964.”3 The break with diplomatic history was staged all the more forcefully as the history of international relations also had to assert itself, simultaneously, in a conflictual relationship with the Annales School. The genesis of the Annales has often been presented in John Harvey’s words as “a chivalric narrative of French history by pitting academic innovation against walls of national rivalry

1 Duroselle, Jean-Baptiste. “De ‘l’histoire diplomatique’ à ‘l’histoire des relations internationales.’” Études d’histoire des relations internationales (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1966), 1–15, here p. 4. 2 Anderson, Matthew S. The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450–1919 (London: Longman, 1993); Hamilton, Keith and Richard Langhorne. The Practice of Diplomacy. Its Evolution, Theory and Administration (London: Routledge, 1994). 3 See Frank, Robert, ed. Pour l’histoire des relations internationales (Paris: puf, 2012), 12.

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Diplomacy and the History of International relations 35 and conservatism.”4 In fact, one of the promoters of this French “New Histo- ry,” Lucien Febvre, did not deprive himself of ruthless accounts of books from diplomatic history such as Emile Bourgeois’s Manuel historique de politique étrangère, already cited, or the collective work edited by Henri Hauser, His- toire diplomatique de l’Europe published in 1929, the year in which the Annales d’histoire économique et sociale journal was launched.5 The third academic field in which the history of emerging international relations had to stand out was that of a new discipline in political science that became institutionalized at the end of the First World War (namely ir), with its first think tanks and its first academic chairs. Like their Anglo-Saxon counterparts, French diplomatic historians have suffered from being reduced, over time, to the role of “hewers-of-wood” and “drawers-of-waters” by political scientists, those who provided the materials for the latter’s conceptual reflection.6 In this context, working on diplomacy became suspicious. The tradition of diplomatic history, understood as a history “from the top,” apprehended by the analysis of the actions and representations of its diplomatic and governmen- tal elites, has been maintained by French historians across generations (Jean- Baptiste Duroselle, Jean-Claude Allain, Maurice Vaïsse, Georges-Henri Soutou, Stanislas Jeannesson). Georges-Henri Soutou, now a member of the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, has always proclaimed his attachment to Al- bert Sorel, the founder of diplomatic history in France.7 Sorel entered the Quai d’Orsay by co-optation, where he was entrusted with collecting documents at- testing to German abuses on French territory during the 1870 conflict; he was then placed on leave in 1872 to inaugurate the brand new chair of diplomatic history at the Ecole libre des sciences politiques, where he taught until 1904. Sorel, a law graduate, had trained in diplomatic history through his diplomatic practice and reading diplomatic archives (in May 1874 he joined the ministry’s diplomatic archives commission). In the article “Teaching Diplomatic History,” he stated that “the history of diplomacy [is] the history of relations between

4 Harvey, John L. “An American Annales? The aha and the Revue internationale d’histoire économique of Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch.” The Journal of Modern History 76 (3) (2004), 578–621, here p. 584. 5 See Febvre, Lucien. “Histoire ou politique? Un problème d’orientation.” Revue de synthèse, 51. Synthèse historique 1 (1) (1931), 9–14. 6 Hunt, Michael H. “The Long Crisis in u.s. Diplomatic History: Coming to Closure.” Diplomatic History 16 (1) (1992), 115–16. 7 Soutou, Georges-Henri. “Die französische Schule der Geschichte internationaler Beziehun- gen.” In Internationale Geschichte: Themen - Ergebnisse - Aussichten, eds. Wilfried Loth and Jürgen Osterhammel (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2000), 32–44.

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36 Badel nations and states […]” and that its materials fall into two categories: “diplomatic documents proper: treaties, protocols, notes, instructions, dispatches, reports” and “personal documents, intimate correspondence, the memories of actors and witnesses.”8 Like his British counterpart John R. Seeley, Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, who defended history as a “school of the statesman,”9 Sorel intended to train future diplomats through history: “This science is par excellence a state science. The teaching of diplomatic history provides future diplomats with a series of well-defined experiences and a series of concepts that are essential to them. […] The history that is being made for the future lives on no other elements than that made in the past.”10 At the Ecole libre des sciences politiques, he taught his students the negotiations of the past and or- ganized role-playing games, but did not devote a book or an article as such to diplomatic practices. And, conversely, it is still a particular feature of the training of French diplomats at the beginning of the 20th century that ap- prentices are required not only to acquire good historical knowledge, but also to do an internship at the Department for Diplomatic Archives. The study of sources should enable the future diplomat to acquire the diplomatic language and style, to learn the procedure of negotiation, to know the traditions and characteristics of each Court. This intimacy between history and diplomacy was reinforced by the creation of a Société d’histoire diplomatique founded in May 1886 and by the edition of the Revue d’histoire diplomatique, which was both a veritable conservatory of the practices of the “Old diplomacy” and a lucid observatory of current developments, welcoming articles from diplomats and historians alike.

A Two-step Process of Renewed Interest

Paradoxically, it was the French historian who had theorized the “rupture,” J.-B. Duroselle, who became Renouvin’s successor at the Sorbonne in 1964, and who relaunched the history of diplomacy by focusing on administrative structures – ministerial offices – and staff – diplomats – nonetheless still apprehended “from the top.” The standard analysis was developed in the chapter

8 Sorel, Albert. “L’enseignement de l’histoire diplomatique.” In Nouveaux essais d’histoire et de critique 3rd. ed. (Paris, Librairie Plon, 1888), 75–84. 9 Seeley, J. R. “A Historical Society.” Macmillan’s Magazine (November 1881), 43–55, here 51. 10 Sorel, Albert. “L’enseignement de l’histoire diplomatique,” 84.

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Diplomacy and the History of International relations 37 devoted to the dysfunction of French diplomacy during the 1936 Rhine crisis, in La Décadence. Politique extérieure de la France, 1932–1939, published in 1979. Duroselle’s attention to the functioning of the diplomatic sphere stemmed from his well-known interest in the decision-making process dear to political science of his time. But it is also due, and this is less well known, to the relationship he established while at Notre Dame University (Indiana) with the former diplomat Stephen Kertesz, who emigrated to the United States follow- ing the Communists’ takeover in Hungary in June 1947; Kertesz first did some teaching at Yale, then at Notre Dame, where he ran the Committee on Interna- tional Relations, created by Waldemar Gurian in 1949 with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation.11 Kertesz had been the general secretary of the Hun- garian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1946. He belonged to this line of diplomats who can be linked to another Paris Peace Conference, that of 1919, with Harold Nicolson who developed a reflexive and critical analysis of the evolution of his profession. In 1959, Kertesz published Diplomacy in a Changing World, in particular, in which Duroselle published the article “French Diplomacy in the Postwar World” and made a number of recommendations to reform the French diplomatic apparatus. At Kertesz’s initiative, the contribu- tors developed analyses focusing on the values of diplomacy, the continuity of practices, the behaviors of negotiators according to their nation of origin, which reflect a culturalist approach to their subject. Jean-Baptiste Duroselle thus appears as the precursor, in France, of a renewed diplomatic history. From the 2000s onwards, the renewal of the historiography of international relations has enabled a new generation of researchers to promote in an un- complicated way the object of “diplomacy,” which has fallen into disuse and marginalization.12 Stimulated by the work of medieval and modern historians, they are open to the examination of field practices and study the structures, actors, practices and cultures of revolutionary diplomacy (Marc Belissa, Vir- ginie Martin), of French diplomacy (Yves Dénéchère, Gilles Ferragu, Claire Sanderson, Stanislas Jeannesson, Marion Aballea),13 Soviet diplomacy (Sabine

11 Badel, Laurence. “Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, l’Européen atlantique.” In Historiens d’Europe, historiens de l’Europe, ed. Denis Crouzet (Ceyzérieu: Champ Vallon, 2017), 323–39, here 334–35. See also Badel, Laurence, ed. Histoire et relations internationales. Naissance d’une discipline académique des années 1920 aux années 1950 (forthcoming 2021). 12 Badel, Laurence, and Stanislas Jeannesson. “Introduction. Une histoire globale de la diplomatie?” Monde(s), 5 (1) (2014), 6–26; Zeiler, Thomas. “The Diplomatic History Band- wagon. A State of the Field.” Diplomatic History, 95 (4) (2009) 1053–73. 13 As for France, cf. Jeannesson, Stanislas. “Diplomatie et politique étrangère de la France contemporaine: un bilan historiographique depuis 1990.” Histoire, économie et sociétés 2 (2012), 87–98.

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38 Badel

Dullin), or of consular diplomacy (Fabrice Jesné, Mathieu Jestin).14 These works have assimilated the achievements of social and cultural history over the past twenty years. Working on French economic diplomacy in the 20th century, we have par- ticipated in this renewal through a cultural approach to the administrative departments ensuring its development and implementation and through a sociology of the field actors who foster its growth in foreign markets.15 The “ju- nior” embassy staff, commercial attachés and advisers, had never been studied so far. Their amalgamation into a specific body of civil servants in 1950, the Corps de l’Expansion économique à l’étranger, is symptomatic of the dirigisme that characterized the reconstruction of France after Liberation and that, more broadly, permeates the French economy. While they acted as an essential link in terms of information on foreign markets and tender procedure, and played the role of intermediaries between companies and French administrations, commercial advisers have sometimes been the only representatives of the French State in countries where no embassy was established. This case study has had a profound impact on our subsequent work and on the research we initiated. It has prompted us to reflect critically on the foun- dations of the compartmentalized vision of diplomatic action that historians have long had. This vision reflected both the administrative division of exter- nal action, according to a methodical or geographical principle, and the mental hierarchy of diplomats and other international actors whose action these historians and researchers analyzed. These divisions have been so internalized by historians (and by social scientists) that they have entailed an implicit pri- oritization of international issues. At the top of this hierarchy were political issues. This has fostered research focused on the ministers and “great ambassa- dors” mentioned above, on bilateral inter-state relations, considered as many drawers, stacked one on top of the other, with political and strategic relations, economic relations and cultural relations components. Such a historian’s “mental map” seemed to postulate the autonomy of the fields of action, even though the files studied underlined an awareness of the intertwining of issues by contemporaries. In contrast to a strict compartmentalization established at the expense of the complexity of international realities, we wish to rethink the links between political order, economic order and cultural order. The analysis

14 See also “Les consuls dans tous leurs états: essais et bibliographie (avant 1914). Les études consulaires à l’épreuve de la Méditerranée.” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 93 (2016). 15 Badel, Laurence. “Conflicting Identities. French Economic Diplomacy between the State and the Companies in the Twentieth Century.” Diplomacy & Statecraft 25 (3) (2014), 432–52.

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Diplomacy and the History of International relations 39 of commercial diplomacy also feeds into a more general reflection on tradi- tional diplomatic functions (representing, protecting, informing, negotiating, and promoting interests) traditionally assigned to heads of mission, and on what we call the “diplomaticity” of non-diplomatic (i.e., non-state) actors. This analysis helps us understand that state representation can be assumed by a subaltern actor, or even by a non-diplomatic actor such as a company or an employers association. In return, it questions the porosity of the borders between public and private. In contrast to the disdain shown by the major powers of the European Concert, the attitude of Switzerland or Sweden since the nineteenth century has been representative of the behavior of the “small states,” which assert themselves through an active commercial diplomacy. It is also the preferred route for states banned from the international com- munity so as to obtain their reintegration. Continuing along this path, we are now interested in diplomatic practices identified by political science as a type of paradiplomacy – city diplomacy, diplomacy of regions – where economic, technical, social or cultural cooperation networks are being intertwined.

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