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Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 27 August 2008 Version of attached le: Published Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Wright, J. (2005) 'Social reform, state reform and Aristide Briand's moment of hope in France, 1909-10.', French historical studies., 28 (1). pp. 31-67. Further information on publisher's website: http://fhs.dukejournals.org/content/vol28/issue1/ Publisher's copyright statement: Additional information: Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk Social Reform, State Reform, and Aristide Briand’s Moment of Hope in France, 1909–1910 Julian Wright The period of Aristide Briand’s first ministry, from the summer of 1909 to the autumn of 1910, offers a very particular window on the politics and intellectual arguments of the Third Republic. Falling between a period of comparative stability, when the Radical governments of Emile Combes (1902–5) and Georges Clemenceau (1906–9) had dominated politics, and a period of greater confusion, from 1910 to 1914, Briand’s first ministry coincided with a great resurgence of optimism in French politics. Combes and Clemenceau had fought battles that, according to republican orthodoxy, were necessary to establish the republic on a firmer footing. Yet these battles had been divisive. A constructive reform agenda, led by the soft-tongued center-left politician Briand, offered a new tone and a new hope. The diversity of the forces that coalesced in support of Briand gives his ‘‘moment of hope’’ great sig- nificance for understanding the nature of republican political debate in the Third Republic as a whole. One important reason to focus on Briand’s first government is that the complexity of the period from 1909 to the First World War is often oversimplified in textbooks, where, understandably, the space for these years is devoted largely to foreign affairs. There is more at stake here, however. During Briand’s first ministry several strands of French political thought came together that have received too little attention. Ques- tions such as how to decentralize the state and reform the electoral sys- tem fascinated republicans at the time; and yet much historiography Julian Wright is lecturer in modern European history at the University of Durham and is pursu- ing a large project on the political thought and activity of a broad spectrum of characters in the Third Republic. He is author of The Regionalist Movement in France, 1890–1914: Jean Charles-Brun and French Political Thought (Oxford, 2003). He wishes to thank Robert Gildea and Jonathan Wright of Oxford University and Stuart Jones of Manchester University, who commented on earlier drafts of this article, and the editors and referees of French Historical Studies, who offered helpful comments and suggestions. French Historical Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Winter 2005) Copyright © 2005 by the Society for French Historical Studies 32 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES sidelines those very questions. From the Boulanger crisis and the Drey- fus affair through the political crisis of the mid-1920s and the Popu- lar Front, the history of the Third Republic is often written as one of moments of divisions between the two great movements in French politics, reaction and revolution.1 It is this dialectic that sets the agenda, and issues that do not fit its conceptualization of French politics are often neglected. Briand’s ‘‘moment of hope,’’ then, demonstrates the complexity of French politics.The intellectual movements and political debates that are our subject here do not easily fit into the classic nar- rative of French political history. Thus our analysis of Briand’s moment of hope has to be situated within a revisiting of the history of the Third Republic as a whole. Three vital themes came together during Briand’s first government: state reform, social reform, and, underscoring both, what we may call an ‘‘impulse’’ for reconciliation. These have a relevance that goes beyond the bounds of the Third Republic to the whole idea of the state and social reform in contemporary France. In the wider per- spective, the most interesting legacies have been left by constructive reformers such as the social reformers of the Third Republic, the state planners of the 1950s, or the advocates of decentralization since the 1980s. A commentator of 1910 described decentralization as a theme that had been pored over for decades but that always seemed new and startling. How pertinent that remark is in the twenty-first century.2 Jean- Pierre Raffarin framed his whole governmental enterprise within a mis- sion to decentralize and rejuvenate the republic; but this present-day state reformer has roots in a belle époque that French history has only recently begun to examine.3 Thus the movement for state reform in 1910 foreshadowed a debate still unresolved today. If state reform was one of the main themes of Briand’s first ministry, social reform was its essential complement.The social reform movement dwelt on several issues, but at its heart was the attempt to improve labor relations. Judith F. Stone, who has been at the forefront of work on this movement, has shown how such ideas penetrated the Radical 1 The classic characterization was that of the party of movement and the party of order: François Goguel, La politique des partis sous la IIIe République, 4th ed. (Paris, 1958). 2 Henry Bérenger, in L’action, May 16, 1910: ‘‘Who would have thought that the idea of reorganizing France’s administration on regional lines would have seemed a novelty, or a chimera? If ever a question has been studied, discussed, elucidated over the last eighty years, it is that one. Well! Ask ten Frenchmen at random: you won’t find three who know the first thing about it. This will not stop them from shrugging their shoulders if someone, grounding their argument in tra- dition and reason, suggests that they can accomplish regional reform.’’ 3 Much of the rationale behind Raffarin’s program may be found in his book Pour une nou- velle gouvernance (Paris, 2002). BRIAND’S MOMENT OF HOPE 33 Party.4 But social reform was essential to a wider group of republicans. Because the Radicals were often obsessed with the defense of the republic, there was a debate within Radicalism about whether social reform was a distraction or a vital agenda that would rejuvenate the republic. A third theme underpins these two reform movements, that of apaisement (appeasement). This term was not merely a slogan—and it was coined in domestic political debate, not in the context of inter- war internationalism.5 I would argue that the word contained a seri- ous reflection on the nature of political reform. Those who embraced state reform and social reform described their politics as a ‘‘constructive’’ politics, or a ‘‘politique réaliste’’ (i.e., a ‘‘politics of the real’’ or ‘‘politics of the possible,’’ rather than a ‘‘cynically realist politics’’). In 1910 this constructive politics was predicated on reconciliation. Indeed, Briand’s most important contribution may have been not so much a precise reform agenda as the expression of this feeling of reconciliation and generosity.6 Yet French republicanism has never been entirely happy about reconciling itself with its opponents. One commentator said that the Third Republic had failed because it could never achieve true political consensus.7 Theideaofapaisement has been described, both at the time and subsequently, as a nefarious attempt to build a coalition of Socialists and reactionaries against the dominant Radical Party, which, with its concentration on the issues of universal suffrage and the lay state, is the most apt representative of republicanism. It is time to revisit this overly cynical position. Since François Furet’s seminal Penser la Révolution française, the question of the end of the Revolution has been reopened.8 With this in mind, the concept of reconciliation may be seen as an attempt to halt the cycle of revolution and install a regime of real progress and reform.Whether all republicans were ready for this in 1910 is of course another matter, but for the reformers who came together around Briand, the rejuvenation of the republic had to begin with reconciliation. These three themes, then, state reform, social reform, and the impulse for reconciliation, define our understanding of Briand’s first ministry. To examine these topics, we will focus first on the intellectual 4 Judith F. Stone, The Search for Social Peace: Reform Legislation in France, 1890–1914 (New York, 1985). 5 One commentator to present Briand’s campaign for apaisement in a positive light was Georges Bonnamour, L’apaisement: Les services français d’un homme d’état (Paris, 1913). 6 In Oct. 1910, one of Briand’s correspondents described his conception of the republic as ‘‘generous, expansive, fraternal.’’ Ministère des affaires étrangères, PA-AP 335 (papiers Briand), vol. 25 (hereafter ‘‘Briand papers,’’ followed by volume number). 7 Joseph Paul-Boncour, Entredeuxguerres, 3 vols. (Paris, 1945). 8 François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, trans.

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