Entente Cordiale Research Articles

Lord Haldane and the July Crisis

ABSTRACT There are widely differing interpretations of Lord Haldane’s behaviour during the July crisis. To some historians, the Lord Chancellor was part of a group – alongside Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill – loyal to the Anglo-French entente cordiale, who supported British intervention. As a former Secretary of War, they also believe he was committed to the early despatch of a British Expeditionary Force to the continent. But some of his contemporaries suspected Haldane of ‘pro-Germanism’, believed that he strove to prevent Britain going to war, that he worked to forestall the despatch of troops to France and that he tried to block Lord Kitchener’s appointment to head the War Office. This essay reconsiders the issue, exploiting evidence unavailable to earlier writers – notably an unpublished memoir by Haldane’s close friend, the Librarian of the House of Lords, Edmund Gosse – and argues that, far from exhibiting sympathy for Germany in 1914, Haldane was at the forefront of those who pushed the Liberal government towards war, having decided, early in the July crisis, that Germany was determined to exploit the situation to tip the balance of power in its own favour. He also acted as an important emotional prop for Grey in the closing week of the crisis and foresaw that the war, far from being ‘over by Christmas’, was likely to last for years.

One Earth: The Equilibrium between the Human and the Bacterial Worlds.

Misuse and abuse of antibiotics on humans, cattle, and crops have led to the selection of multi-resistant pathogenic bacteria, the most feared 'superbugs'. Infections caused by superbugs are progressively difficult to treat, with a subsequent increase in lethality: the toll on human lives is predicted to reach 10 million by 2050. Here we review three concepts linked to the growing resistance to antibiotics, namely (i) the Resistome, which refers to the collection of bacterial genes that confer resistance to antibiotics, (ii) the Mobilome, which includes all the mobile genetic elements that participate in the spreading of antibiotic resistance among bacteria by horizontal gene transfer processes, and (iii) the Nichome, which refers to the set of genes that are expressed when bacteria try to colonize new niches. We also discuss the strategies that can be used to tackle bacterial infections and propose an entente cordiale with the bacterial world so that instead of war and destruction of the 'fierce enemy' we can achieve a peaceful coexistence (the One Earth concept) between the human and the bacterial worlds. This, in turn, will contribute to microbial biodiversity, which is crucial in a globally changing climate due to anthropogenic activities.

The Nkrumah Factor: The Strategic Alignment of Early Postcolonial Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria

Abstract In stark contrast to the Nigerian Civil War, when the Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny supported the secessionist Biafran Republic against the Federal Military Government, early postcolonial relations between Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria were close. This ‘entente cordiale’ was underpinned by the friendship of Houphouët-Boigny and the Nigerian Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who were both anti-communist, pro-western, capitalist, and in favour of African co-operation instead of integration. Yet it was Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah who, through his criticism and alleged subversive machinations against Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria, gave the two countries their common purpose. Focusing, unlike previous scholarship, on the military and strategic responses of Abidjan and Lagos to Accra, and based on multi-archival research, this article argues that the Nkrumah factor brought about a strategic alignment between Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. It also shows, however, that despite a common threat assessment, domestic politics had a decisive and diverging impact on the foreign and security policies of the two states, and that regional and colonial legacies turned out to have a more significant impact on early postcolonial Africa than did the Cold War. The article sheds light on African agency, while simultaneously going beyond and, more significantly, offering an alternative perspective to the Cold War-driven historiography of early postcolonial Africa, and its tendency to focus on external rather than African actors.

Entente Cordiale Redux: the impact of Brexit on British and French foreign and security policy

ABSTRACT Brexit has been a game-changer for Britain, and its key partners. Strategic shifts as well as historic relations have impacted the UK’s relationship with France in a number of unexpected ways. This article explores some of the key historical events that have caused both agreement and strife between the two states, looking at the bilateral treaties established to deepen cooperation on security and defence, specifically the Lancaster House agreements, and considers the series of intriguing accords and conventions that have arisen from the mid-1980s, as well as the logistical challenges of the shared border and juxtaposed border controls of Britain and France. Post-Brexit diplomatic forums in which Britain and France are joined by Germany are then explored, before assessing Britain’s attempts to forge its new role in relation to long-standing commitments to France and an evolving relationship with the EU.

Orta Asya'nın Yapay Zeka Jeopolitiği: Rusya ve Çin Örnekleri

In the 21st century, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are increasingly transforming the instruments of power and contributing to intensifying rivalry on the dynamics of balance of power. In the context of the Central Asian geopolitics, China’s expanding AI technologies do not only serve for its economic growth and national power, but embody future areas of uncertainty in the Sino-Russian relations. Despite the current state of a kind of 'entente cordiale' over their role in the Central Asia, the future developments in the AI technologies can reinforce far-reaching repercussions in their relations. In this vein, this study analyzes the implications of AI technologies in terms of power politics and discusses the future of Sino-Russian relations in the Central Asian context. It addresses the possible utilization of AI technologies under the context of military, economic, and political areas and discusses possible consequences on the future of regional systemic dynamics. Consequently, the study argues that despite ongoing harmonious relations between the two power, the development and utilization of AI as a strategic asset in the Central Asian landscape can generate new areas of strategic competition and challenges for the future of Sino-Russian relations.

Did the 1904 Entente Cordiale Originate in Bordeaux Thanks to Sports in 1895? Reflections on Sport Diplomacy

Succeeding François Guizot and Lord Hamilton Gordon’s ‘cordial understanding’, the Franco-British 1904 Entente cordiale has been widely studied in its diplomatic, trading and touristic aspects through sport. Maybe because of its vital role in the First World War, its social facet has been less explored. Lord-Mayor of London’s visit to Bordeaux’s last international exhibition in September 1895, enhanced by two days of cycling festivities and races, shows masonic links within the French organisers and with certain British contributors. As such, this could have been considered not as the first sport diplomatic act but as an attempt which have been occurred in this way and led to the creation of a British association called ‘Entente cordiale’ which had no equivalent in France. Despite some actions both side of the Channel, ahead of the official agreement, and the creation of a new organisation in Normandy in connection with the Touring Club de France, the expression rapidly faded out. Finally, this study shows what conditions must be met for a sporting event to be described as diplomatic. The distinction between sport diplomacy and diplomacy through sport is not enough in the light of history to explore international political relations.

Polyphonic internationalism: The Lucie Zimmern School of International studies

This article recovers the musician, pedagogue, institution-builder, and intellectual Lucie Zimmern (1875–1963). Together with her husband Alfred, a canonical international thinker, Zimmern founded and ran the Geneva School of International Studies (1923–1939), where she outlined and taught the principles of what we term ‘polyphonic internationalism’ to hundreds of students from across the globe: the musical texture of polyphony was an ordering principle for a world which had yet come to terms with the reality of human diversity. Zimmern’s musical formation, her complex racial, religious, and national identity, combined with her experience as a private cultural diplomat of the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale, shaped her distinctive analysis of international politics which she disseminated in academic debates, written works, and public lectures. We analyse the genesis and claims of polyphonic internationalism, overtly a culturally relativist concept that sought to reconcile national and cultural self-determination with the hierarchies of empire. Lucie Zimmern’s trajectory as a thinker and her experience as a ‘wife of the canon’ reveals the gendered politics of intellectual production in the early academic field of international relations where the boundaries between the feminised domains of culture and internationalist pedagogy, and the soon-to-be masculinised academic, and ‘scientific’ study of international relations remained surprisingly permeable.

A pedagogic compact: retrieving ‘powerful’ educational knowledge from Didaktik and curriculum studies

ABSTRACT We set out to address the question—what does it mean for educational knowledge to be ‘powerful’? We compare the Anglo tradition of curriculum studies with the Didaktik tradition through the lens of an analysis of curriculum structure in postgraduate courses in South African universities rooted in either the Anglo or Didaktik tradition. This analysis of curriculum structure affords a view of each tradition that we argue is ‘powerful’, but in different ways. While Didaktik provides a humanities-based curriculum coherence in teacher education, curriculum studies offers social scientific possibilities for empirical inquiry. We make the argument that a strategic entente cordiale, or pedagogic compact, would strengthen the professional position of teachers and education academics in the respective countries. This is particularly so in the context of threats posed by instrumental trends driven by educational sciences underpinning TIMSS, Pisa and the like.

Anglo-French neurological interactions in the 19th and early 20th centuries: Physicians, places and events.

The development of neurology as an independent discipline in the mid-19th century was considerably influenced by the almost simultaneous foundation of the Charcot School at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris and the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic and it's School at Queen Square in London in the 1860's. We have reviewed the early interactions between Charcot's school and the leading neurologists at the National Hospital and also discussed their neurological antecedents and subsequent links up to the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914. Earlier interactions involved Trousseau and Duchenne in France and Graves, Todd, Laycock and Allbutt in Britain. The French Brown-Séquard was one of the first two physicians appointed to the National Hospital. Charcot was a frequent visitor to Britain culminating in his influential role in the 1881 International Medical Congress in London. He first suggested the terms "Parkinson's Disease" and "Jacksonian Epilepsy". He attracted numerous British visitors to Paris and his studies of hysteria were influenced by Laycock, Todd and Russell Reynolds. Hughlings Jackson drew upon the anatomical studies of Gratiolet in his interactions with Broca and Charcot which influenced French views on aphasia, epilepsy and cortical localisation. Ball, an Englishman, was the first Professor of mental and brain diseases in Paris in 1877. Bruce in Edinburgh and Kinnier Wilson in London both maintained frequent contacts with Paris, where the latter first presented his studies of hepatolenticular degeneration in 1912. The Entente Cordiale of 1904 led to further interactions with the leading role of the French and British physicians Raymond and Duckworth. Two outstanding British women, Elizabeth Garrett and Blanche Edwards, qualified in Medicine in Paris with neurological interests. Our review emphasises the constructive influence of the French and British Schools on each other and thus on the development of neurology. The French influence was primarily the establishment of the anatomo-clinical method and the use of photographic illustrations in publications. The British School influence was its Clinical Assessment Skills and scientific studies of newly recognised diseases and concepts and its early development of neurosurgery.

The “Entente cordiale” and the rivalry of Great Britain and France in North Africa in 1830s–1840s. The example of Morocco

The article examines the relationship between the two leading powers of the 19th century, Great Britain and France, against the background of colonial rivalry in North Africa. Analyzing relevant English, French, and Moroccan diplomatic documents, the author concludes that the issue of establishing a dominant influence in Morocco was one of the main issues in the relations between Great Britain and France in 1830–1840. The French takeover of Algeria disrupted the regional and European balance of influence and gave a conflicting character to the relations between the competing powers. The “Entente Cordiale” (“Cordial Accord”), designed to contribute to the preservation of peace in Europe, acted as a deterrent that did not allow Great Britain and France to move to an open phase of confrontation in the Maghreb. The sharp phase of the rivalry between the two powers in Morocco occurred in 1837–1844 and was associated with the name of the hero of the liberation struggle of Algeria from the French invaders, Emir Abd al-Qadir. The Franco-Moroccan War of 1844 ended with the defeat of Morocco, facing the threat of French occupation. Due to the pressure from British diplomacy, the Franco-Moroccan treaty was concluded, and the sultanate existed as an independent country for about sixty years, although in fact the European powers did not stop systematically undermining the country's sovereignty.

Points of View on Franco-British Defence Relations

Franco-British defence relations are long-standing and sound, and merit reinforcing for the longer term in view of the degree to which the two countries hold common strategic interests. Military cooperation has not ceased growing since the Entente cordiale, and indeed has been strengthened by the storms that we have had to, and will continue to ride out together.

Was the German Battlefleet Programme the Main Reason for the End of Britain’s “Splendid Isolation”?

This historiographical essay challenges the common historical narrative that Britain left 'splendid isolation' as a result of perceived German aggression - particularly considering Germany's battlefleet programme. Investigating closer Anglo-American ties, the Anglo-Japanese agreement and the Entente Cordiale show that Britain started to abandon an isolationist policy due to its vast, global and often burdensome empire before the German battlefleet started to present itself as a problem. Rather than pinning Britain's alliances at the turn of the twentieth-century on one factor in Europe, this essay investigates the impact the Americas, Africa, Central Asia and the Far East had on Britain's changing international position.

Allied Cooperation in Europe on the Eve of World War I

The article puts forward an opinion that the current crisis of world order requires reverting to discovering the reasons of World War I. The author states that in 1914, a majority of decision-makers believed they had a dominant strategy; thus, the policy they followed was the best, irrespective of another party’s actions. The complicated task of clarifying the concerns and intentions of others as well as predicting the aggravation of the situation as a result of their actions was not taken into account. The quest for minimising responsibility and increasing comfort while taking bellicose measures hindered the realisation of the fact that a more cautious strategy was a safer option. The military and political alliances, including the Entente Cordiale (the Triple Entente) and the Triple Alliance (after Italy’s withdrawal, the Central Powers), the defence purposes enshrined in secret agreements notwithstanding, were established for waging wars but not for maintaining peace by mutual containment. Fragile arrangements between the two alliances did not allow them to prevent opponents or partners from unleashing the war and subsequently halt hostilities after the failure of a range of envisaged strategic operations. The states continuously threatened each other with their actions, and repeated attempts to create the impression of a threat of aggression, although without any intention to use military force, undermined international stability. The efforts of European leaders constituted a diplomatic game, as the parties bluffed and sought to play trump cards they never had. The initial stakes, particularly colonial and territorial claims of actors, were negligible as compared with the incommensurably higher payback – the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German, and Ottoman empires, and the two totalitarian revolutions in the 20th-century Europe, Russian (Bolshevist) and German (Nazi). The author concludes that it was not allied obligations that prompted states to choose a certain side; rather, each country’s government decided to join the war on their own, guided by spurious ‘national interests’. Keywords: World War I, Entente, military and political alliances, Europe, 20th century.

A Parliamentary Entente Cordiale? The House of Commons Defence Committee’s Joint Inquiry with the Assemblée Nationale’s Standing Committee on National Defence and the Armed Forces

AbstractInterparliamentary relations do not attract much in the way of public or even academic attention. However, they are an aspect of parliamentary life in which there has been a series of experiments by select committees in the House of Commons. While one of the more prominent examples of such experimentation was the international grand committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy spearheaded by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, this article will look at another example of select committee‐led interparliamentary relations, namely the ‘joint inquiry’ conducted by the House of Commons Defence Committee and the Assemblée nationale’s Standing Committee on National Defence into Future Cruise and Anti‐Ship Missiles in 2018.This article, written by an official involved in the inquiry, offers the first reflections on the experience of this joint inquiry, demonstrates how the model undertaken for the inquiry differed from the approaches taken by other select committees involved in interparliamentary working, and explores whether it might offer a blueprint for future joint inquiries.

Tensions, diplomatie et accommodements dans un espace partagé : la France et l'Angleterre sur la côte ouest de Terre-Neuve II (1842-1870)

In an article previously published in this journal, it was stated that maintaining order in Newfoundland’s disputed shared maritime space was a major challenge in the first half of the 19th century. This follow-up article attempts to show that, as of 1840, diplomats working in metropolitan areas and Franco-British  frigate officers patrolling the coast of Newfoundland were preoccupied with two closely related issues in terms of maintaining order. While they were expressing their respective colonial ambitions elsewhere on the planet, France and England advocated for a gradual diplomatic rapprochement that would lead to  two important agreements, namely the 1854 Alliance during the Crimean War and the Entente Cordiale of 1904. In a context such as this, the quest for compromise became a fundamental responsibility of naval officers in both countries. Like diplomats at the bargaining table, they had to be able to blow hot  and cold in order to assert themselves but also to exercise restraint and judgment. Diverting from this course of action could have had repercussions in the back rooms of Europe and jeopardized the Franco-British process of rapprochement.

Martin Thomas and Richard Toye. Arguing about Empire: Imperial Rhetoric in Britain and France, 1882–1956.

In Arguing about Empire: Imperial Rhetoric in Britain and France, 1882–1956, Martin Thomas and Richard Toye tackle “the most divisive arguments about empire” between and within Britain and France, from Tunisia and Morocco in the early 1880s to Suez in 1956 (1). Their aim is to examine how British and French elites justified imperial activity in cases of both competition and collaboration between the two states. They argue that claims of exceptionalism and superiority on both sides mask and indeed contribute to commonalities in rhetoric, reflecting, in part, the significance of their common project of “co-imperialism” (10). The argument is developed through a series of case studies largely taken from North Africa and Western Asia, chosen as instances where both states were involved and where much discussion was generated (4). These are, unsurprisingly therefore, mostly familiar “crises.” The book starts by examining Tunisia 1881 and Egypt 1882 as the advent of a rhetorical struggle that was very much part of broader, clashing imperial agendas in which strategies of “othering” were pursued by both sides. Shared assumptions about the “civilizing” effects and the complementary existence of the two empires were later tested in Fashoda, but the containment of the crisis of 1898 is held to be “a harbinger of twentieth-century Anglo-French co-imperialist cooperation” (82). Their assessment of events in Morocco in 1905 and 1911 highlights jockeying for imperial advantage within the context of the Entente Cordiale, and the significance of the triangular relationship with Germany, in which “rhetorical posturing supplanted intergovernmental negotiation” (121). The theme of co-imperialism is explored further through Chanak in 1922, which they argue severely strained collaboration, establishing the rancor of subsequent Anglo-French relations in the modern Middle East. World War II as imperial crisis is examined at length, culminating in discord over Syria. Differing domestic contexts feature prominently in the treatment of Suez, cast as “a crisis of prestige for Britain . . . [and] a fatal crisis of regime for France” (229).

Introducing ‘Intimate Civility’: Towards a New Concept for 21st-Century Relationships

Introducing ‘Intimate Civility’: Towards a New Concept for 21st-Century Relationships

Demands of a transnational public sphere: the diplomatic conflict between Joseph Chamberlain and Bernhard von Bülow and how the mass press shaped expectations for mediatized politics around the turn of the twentieth century

ABSTRACTScholarship on media and politics presumes a ‘mediatization’ of politics over time, which overlooks the evolution of a mediatized public sphere that shaped people’s understandings of what actually constituted politics. This article investigates the public sphere to demonstrate how it created expectations for politicians and journalists within the process of the mediatization of politics. To understand how political behaviour changed as a result of mediatization, this article focuses on the turn of the twentieth century, when politics faced an emerging mass press. It analyses one of the most violent episodes of the ‘press wars’ between Germany and Britain before the First World War. In 1901, British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain allegedly insulted the German Army, to which German Imperial Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow reacted aggressively, resulting in a media storm across Europe and the failing of the British-German alliance talks that paved the way for Britain’s Entente Cordiale with France. Part of the reason why this situation escalated was that newspapers in Britain and Germany expressed expectations for politicians to represent the angry opinions of their publics as voiced in the press. However, many newspapers also demanded that Bülow and Chamberlain moderate public opinion by influencing and censoring the press. While Bülow and Chamberlain were ahead of their time in paying attention to press opinions, seeking publicity and managing the press, they failed to meet the contradictory expectations of catering to jingoism while appeasing a foreign public. Meanwhile, newspapers reflected on their political impact on this situation, and started expecting more press responsibility, which moderated the crisis. The case shows how media and politics were not separated spheres, but interacted within a transnational public sphere in which expectations for political and journalistic behaviour were continuously being (re)shaped.

La Belle Époque d’un géographe colonial : Marcel Dubois, universitaire et figure publique, entre Affaire Dreyfus et Entente cordiale (1894-1905)

La figure de Marcel Dubois (1856-1916) est fondamentalement liee a la geographie coloniale qu’il enseigna a la Sorbonne pendant pres de 20 ans, a partir de 1893. Pourtant, cet universitaire singulier parmi les eleves de Paul Vidal de la Blache occupa une place beaucoup plus diversifiee dans le paysage des intellectuels francais de la Belle Epoque que ce secteur particulier des savoirs coloniaux. Homme de combats, en particulier pendant l’Affaire Dreyfus, universitaire engage, partisan d’une geographie coloniale « appliquee » voire politique, il fut davantage que le disciple renegat de Vidal et de son groupe d’eleves normaliens « orthodoxes ». Nous allons donc ici essayer de tracer un portrait polymorphe de ce geographe complexe, de preciser son itineraire personnel et professionnel, ses reseaux et son action, au-dela de la seule geographie coloniale, afin de tracer de lui une image plus conforme a ce qu’il representa dans la France et le Paris de la Troisieme Republique.

The Eurafrique Initiative, Ernest Bevin and Anglo–French Relations in the Foreign Office, 1945–1950

ABSTRACTThis analysis examines the prevalence of Eurafrican thinking in the British Foreign Office throughout the late 1940s. Drawing on British and French diplomatic archives, it reveals the centricity of the Foreign Office, and British Embassy at Paris to a project largely confined to the mental map of the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin. The financial stains facing Britain, often misinterpreted as “decline”, seemed a temporary phenomenon that “multilateral European cooperation” could rectify. Although shelved in 1949–1950, the Eurafrique initiative has seen few historians analyse its strategies across the corridors of power. This analysis reappraises British desires for Western European “co-operation” and a renewed faith in the Entente Cordiale as a geo-political counterweight to growing East–West bipolarity. Discussions of strategies to pool African possessions to recover the European economy were short-lived. Yet they challenged prospects of long-term economic dependence upon the United States in favour of an Anglo–French led European bloc.