Conflicting Identities: French Economic Diplomacy between the State and Companies in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

The question of diplomatic identity has rarely seen study from a specifically historical perspective rooted in the long term. This analysis explores the role and self-perceptions of an unknown and, yet, central actor in the French economic diplomacy: the commercial counsellor. It offers new and stimulating ideas on the entangled links between State and the business sphere in France. The fundamental ambivalence of the commercial counsellor’s identity illuminates the atypical nature of French commercial diplomacy from 1918 to the 2000s. Through assimilation into the Ministry of Economy and in a Janus-like role facing both the Quai d’Orsay and French companies, French commercial counsellors have had to endure a complicated situation whilst remaining the Cinderella of the diplomatic sphere. Deploying an historical analysis to enrich the contemporary debate on the state of diplomacy, this study explores the impact of interventions by non-state actors at the heart of the diplomatic machinery. Far from being an innovation of the 1990s, this intervention was a recurring theme throughout the twentieth century, and its examination sheds new light on the persistence of the neo-corporatist practice of commercial diplomacy in France.