France and Attempt to Resolve the Italo-Ethiopian Conflict in Late 1935: the Hoare–Laval Plan

Abstract

The article is devoted to the policy of France towards Italy and Ethiopia at the initial stage of the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935—1936. It is shown that in the autumn of 1935, the French government took a position aimed at a peaceful settlement of the Italian-Ethiopian conflict at the expense of Ethiopia, since relations with Italy were much more important for France than relations with Ethiopia, and “real policy” required France to reach an agreement primarily with Italy. It is noted that a similar position was taken by the United Kingdom. It is indicated that this resulted in the formation of a plan for the settlement of the conflict, put forward in December 1935 by the head of the French government, Pierre Laval, and the British foreign Minister, Samuel Hoare. It is proved that the Hoare–Laval plan was an early form of the policy of “appeasement of the aggressor,” which became the leading direction of French and British foreign policy during the collapse of the Versailles system of international relations in 1938—1939. The research is based on publications of Soviet, French, Italian and Canadian diplomatic documents, League of Nations documents, memoirs of political figures of that era, as well as unpublished documents from the Archive of Publicistic Activity (Germany).