THE ENTENTE CORDIALE: OF INTELLECTUAL CONSEQUENCE?

The Entente Cordiale celebrated its hundredth birthday on the 8th of April 2004. The agreement made a century ago was preceded by, and largely engineered through, the official visits of King Edward VII to Paris and President Loubet to London. In 2004 the formal ceremonies – state visits by Queen Elizabeth II and President Chirac to France and Great Britain respectively – were combined with joint celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Normandy landings, and were primarily commemorative in nature. Should we see this as symbolic? Certainly, the Entente Cordiale is first and foremost a legacy: that of the partnership between two nations during a century marked by two world wars, the cold war, decolonisation and the continual need to respond to the ideological, economic, social and cultural challenges of modernization. It is this legacy of partnership that provides the foundation for what Prime Ministers Jospin and Blair in 1998 baptized the “shared Franco-British destiny”: the partnership’s historical roots must therefore be analysed.
However the Entente Cordiale is also a contemporary state of mind, a dialogue in which each of the two countries promotes her own identity during alternating cycles of competition and solidarity. In this way the Entente is like a mirror in which the two countries examine each other in light of their respective predilections; it is simultaneously the catalyst and the revelation of distinct ways of thinking. How does this look in 2004?
Finally, given that the brilliance of royal pageantry and republican splendour conjures up new beginnings rather than funereal processions, it is important to explore the future significance of the Entente Cordiale. Today, the American and German flags fly alongside the Union Jack and the Tricolor, and the European standard is flown at European Union celebrations: what does the Entente Cordiale mean at the dawn of the third millennium? When examining the Entente in its past, current and future context it is inappropriate to allow oneself to be distracted by the emotions the media is so fond of arousing; instead one must concentrate on the intellectual aspect of the Entente, studying the research and ideas that have been developing over the last ten years. For this reason, the social and human sciences will serve as our primary medium in seeking to understand what remains a cultural as well as an intellectual venture.

WHAT ANNIVERSAIRY!

What are we celebrating in 2004? First and foremost a diplomatic agreement amply illustrated by photography and caricature, not to mention the cinema.1 The agreement was negotiated by Foreign Ministers Théophile Delcassé and Lord Lansdowne, and Ambassador Paul Cambon. It comprised three parts, whose essential clauses were at the time kept secret. The first section established France’s cession of fishing rights off the “French shore” of Newfoundland, in exchange for London handing over an indemnity payment plus the Los Islands off the coast of Guinea, and a shifting of borders favouring Chad and French Niger. The second part declared that France would relinquish all claims to Egypt, which had been under UK control since 1882, in exchange for British support for the establishment of the French protectorate of Morocco, on condition that the Mediterranean shore opposite Gibraltar was created a Spanish zone. The third part of the agreement delineated the respective areas of influence exerted by London and Paris over Siam, established their joint sovereignty over the New Hebrides and recognized French rule in Madagascar.
The Entente Cordiale was perceived as a completion, bringing to a close a period of colonial conflict that had been rekindled by three crises at the end of the 19th century: the 1896 dispute over areas of Franco/British influence in Siam; the violent Fashoda incident of 1898;2 and the two countries’ profoundly divergent attitudes to the Boer War of 1899-1902. However, perceptions of the Entente were subtly different on either side of the Channel.3 On the British side it was seen as proof to politicians and the public of France’s peaceful intentions, without calling into question Britain’s “splendid isolation.” This loner status had been a tradition since 1815, despite the UK’s rapprochement with the United States (the 1900-01 agreements), her forging of a defensive alliance with Japan in 1902, and increasing concerns about German expansionist ambitions. For a country which since 1713 had always – with the single exception of American independence – been victorious, a country of which Palmerston said “England does not have either permanent friends or enemies, she has permanent interests,” the Entente was simply an opportune choice, part of a diplomatic balancing act; the objective was to transcend potential threats and risks. France on the other hand was weakened by the defeats of 1815 and 1870, and busy rebuilding her national identity after the turmoil of 1871. For her, the Entente was the consolidation of a diplomatic renaissance begun with the 1894 alliance with Russia. Beyond these aspects, the 1904 agreement overturned the historic role of the United Kingdom – more precisely England – as France’s traditional enemy. This notion went back as far as the Norman conquest of 1066, taking in the Hundred Years War, the conflict with Louis XIV, and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars; an epic by turns tragic and glorious starring two symbolic heroes, Joan of Arc and Napoleon I. From now on, France’s hereditary enemy would be Germany. It was this fact that led Paris to orient the Entente towards the future. The Moroccan crises of 1905-06 and 1911 brought confirmation of the expected English support, while the Anglo-Russian accord of 1907 turned the 1904 agreement into a de facto Triple Entente which, consolidated by these crises, would become on 5 September 1914 an active alliance: the three countries, having entered the Great War a month beforehand, promised not to sign separate terms of peace.4 In this way the aim of the 1904 agreement was achieved.
However, the 1904 Entente did not in itself constitute the first rapprochement between London and Paris. During Cromwell’s time and the English Restoration (1660-88) relations were good, as they were at the beginning of the reign of Louis XV; nor must one forget the anglophile attitudes prevailing during the French Restoration (1814-30). To an even greater extent, the July Monarchy (1830-48) established an authentic ideological and diplomatic complicity between France and the United Kingdom. In King Louis Philippe’s 1843 Speech from the Throne, he drew attention to “the sincere friendship that unites the Queen of Great Britain and myself, of which I am all the more confident thanks to the warm understanding [“cordiale entente”] between my government and hers.”5 This bond survived the 1848 revolution. After the common struggle of the Crimean War (1854-56), and the Cobden-Chevalier free trade treaty of 1860, it blossomed anew in the warm relationship between Napoleon III and Queen Victoria. Following France’s defeat by Prussia in 1871, which she was neither willing nor able to prevent, Great Britain no longer saw France as an enemy – only an imperial rival. As early as 1896, at the time of the disputes over Siam, there had been mention of an “entente manquée” or missed opportunity for an accord. While Britain was quite satisfied with the agreement, at the beginning France had more need of the Entente Cordiale and felt its benefits to a greater extent. This no doubt explains why, on both sides of the Channel, the very concept of the Entente Cordiale was expressed in French.
The significance of the 1904 agreement for Franco-British history was therefore due not so much to its content as to the climate it created – an attitude of mutual trust which, without suppressing touchiness or suspicion on either side, opened up a future of potential cooperation. Therefore in 2004, at a time when some provisions of the original treaty have – long ago in the case of Siam, or more recently (1980) in the case of the New Hebrides – become obsolete, we are celebrating not only a memory but also a new opening.
The Entente Cordiale still exists in 2004; what was originally a circumstantial agreement became a de facto (1914-18, 1939-40) or (since the 1947 Dunkirk treaty) a de jure alliance. However it remains an emotional relationship – while the Entente, and indeed the alliance, is celebrated in times of crisis (1914, 1938-40, 1956) and important events (1919, 1944, 1973, 1994) the atmosphere between the two countries is always somewhat tense. With regard to current affairs, France is clearly uncomfortable with both Britain’s machinations in Europe and London’s unconditional support of Washington – to the extent that French politicians and press refer to Great Britain and the United States together as the “Anglo-Saxon” threat. On their side the British are quick to indulge in France-bashing, as we saw with the Bse crisis and divergences over Iraq. However, these critical perspectives are not identical. The French climate is no longer one of blatant anglomania, as in the 18th and 19th centuries, or even the anglophilia that blossomed several times in the first half of the 20th century.6 Neither is the current climate unconditionally anglophobic,7 except during phases of sporting rivalry. It is best described as ambivalent, as can be seen from “Perfide Albion! Douce Angleterre?,” the title of Marc Vion’s recent anthology, or the symposium to take place in Lille (autumn 2004) on the Entente Cordiale, announced as “England or Albion: between fascination and repulsion.” We can thus see how the difference between the image – Albion – and the name – England – illuminates a distinction between the virtual and the real. In other words, these distinct monikers reveal an indisputable capacity to step back and observe. In contrast, francophobia is rampant in Great Britain – indeed politicians, the press and public opinion often seem to wallow in it. In his studies of France8 even the francophile Julian Barnes uses the expression “exquisite enemy,” first employed by the English in Tudor times to refer to the neighbouring country! The absence of an alternative epithet for France would seem to indicate a fusion of image and reality on the British side of the Channel.
The central role that images play in defining the Franco-British relationship is thus clear, and clichés and myths are certainly not lacking! Contemporary French people perceive Great Britain through celebrity magazines, David Lodge’s comic novels, Bridget Jones’s Diary, films of fantasy novels such as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, “documentary dramas” like Gosford Park, Billy Elliott and The Full Monty, and documentaries such as the Bbc programme on the political rise of Tony Blair. The British on the other hand learn about France through portraits of Paris and Provence – especially those of Ted Jones and Peter Mayle9 – and films such as Amélie, not to mention the tabloid press’s gleeful reporting of France’s every political or sporting mishap!
While in general the media survives on cliché, myth and invective setting the “rosbifs” against the “frogs,” some journalists have tried to report the realities. In France, they include René Dabernat, Philippe Daudy, Bernard Rapp and Alain Woodrow;10 British counterparts are Jonathan Fenby and John Ardagh.11 Efforts have also been made to place contemporary relations in their longer historical context, even if this sometimes necessitates dwelling as much on “mésententes culturelles”12 (cultural misunderstandings) as on socio-intellectual partnership and collaboration. This is evident from the publication of anthologies (Marc Vion, Paul Gerbod and Jacques Gury13), broad tableaux (Robert Gibson14) and illustrated accounts15 of the parallel realities of France and England. These efforts are also apparent in the republishing of seminal texts by historians, political commentators and essayists from the last three centuries (Pepys, Macaulay, Gibbon, Guizot, Tocqueville, Trevelyan, Taine, Voltaire16 etc). Also relevant is the increasing degree of conceptual cross-fertilization, for example Peter Ackroyd17 taking on the notion of Albion, previously used almost exclusively by the French; the academic J. Raimond18 transposing Pierre Nora’s “realms of memory” approach to England; and the Oxonian Robert Gildea19 emphasizing the role of the past in the shaping of French national consciousness. Key intellectuals – primarily historians and political scientists – have also attempted to discover the particularities of the “friend on the other side of the Channel”: in France, Monica Charlot and François Bédarida have followed the lead of André Siegfried and Elie Halévy;20 in England Theodore Zeldin’s work belongs to the tradition of Burke and Arthur Young.21 Not to be forgotten are trans-national studies such as the collaboration between François Crouzet, François Bédarida and Douglas Johnson22 published a quarter of a century ago. Because we have to examine Franco-British relations at the level of mind and intelligence, serious analysis of how each half of the “couple” learns about its partner is appropriate – although media clichés can be very revealing! After all, as the French humourist Jean Amadou commented in 1999, “hereditary enemies aren’t only good for declaring war on – sometimes they’re very handy targets for our ill temper!”23

FRANCO BRITISH STUDIES INSTITUTIONS AND FRAMEWORKS

Where and how is the neighbour across the Channel studied?
This section is an attempt – by no means exhaustive, and focusing, naturally, on research and higher education – to describe the main orientations of Franco-British studies.
In Great Britain the relevant disciplines are political science, law, history and economics; also multidisciplinary courses such as Ppe (Philosophy, Politics and Economics), French Studies (language and culture) and European Studies – the latter have been growing rapidly over the last fifteen years. While most of the 90 British higher education institutions offer courses relating to France, some specialize in them. These include the Centre for European Studies, Nuffield and St Antony’s Colleges at Oxford, the London School of Economics, the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London, and the diplomacy-focused Royal Institute of International Affairs. Organizations such as the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France (based at the University of Birmingham with branches in France) are also part of the network of hubs for academic study of the francophone world. However it is important to remember that while French remains the primary foreign language studied in the United Kingdom, 1988’s introduction of the rather narrow National Curriculum into secondary schools has meant that the space assigned to the study of foreign civilizations at university level has either declined, or been subsumed into more “practical” courses, particularly management studies. This means that even within French Studies there is less incentive to focus specifically on the home of Molière and Napoleon! In contrast, British efforts in the narrow sense are greatly complemented, and even compensated for, by the considerable and serious work taking place in anglophone countries such as Canada, Australia and especially the United States. While we shall not be examining them here, these efforts must be taken into account when assessing Anglo-Saxon research on France.
It is unsurprising that courses on Great Britain are available in the hundred-odd universities and Grandes Ecoles in France. Naturally the relevant disciplines include law, political science, history and English – but also geography, and multidisciplinary courses such as those offered by the Institutes of Political Studies. The level of French interest in studying Great Britain is evident in the post-1945 appearance of a new discipline – British civilization – and its inclusion in the university curriculum. The first agrégation (high level) exam on English civilization took place in 1977.
There is also provision for Scottish (Grenoble) and Irish (Rennes, Caen) studies, and departments focusing on the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, India) at Bordeaux, Rennes and Paris VIII. Thanks to its status as the primary foreign language taught in France, English in the strict sense remains strong despite competition from American language and cultural studies, with which it is naturally associated. Among the centres and networks of research are Paris III (language and culture), Paris IV (history and civilization), Paris VII (Institut Charles V), Paris XIII, Celcla in Rouen, Ecla in Lille, Gerb in Bordeaux, the Franco-British Lawyers’ Society Limited, Ceri and the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (both part of the Iep in Paris), the Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur and above all the transdisciplinary, cross-university Centre de recherche en civilisation britannique (Crecib) – one of the major centres for study of the anglophone world. The 2002 creation of a European network of studies on the same theme, based at Paris XIII but linked to the English universities of Portsmouth, Warwick and Loughborough, points to France’s fascination with its Entente Cordiale partner. In addition to these academic structures, and the embassies with their cultural and linguistic services, are the contact points, and information and research centres created by the governments themselves.
The Institut britannique and the British Council in Paris are mirrored by the French Institute in London, the Maison Française in Oxford and the French Institute in Edinburgh. Several grant programmes facilitate links between these centres – the Oxford Besse Scholarship, the Lavoisier Scholarships coordinated by the Maison Française, the London Thiers Foundation fellowships, grants from the British Council and the Economic and Social Research Council (formerly Social Science Research Council), and transnational grants offered by the Programme Alliance (1989). In 1995 President Chirac and Prime Minister Major inaugurated the Entente Cordiale scholarships, which have already supported more than 400 researchers.
On top of all the Erasmus-Socrates European programme has led to a massive and fruitful traffic of exchange students, teachers and researchers. In addition, university courses create subject specific exchange programmes. Finally the Franco-British Council, created in 1972, employs a significant number of researchers from each country to work alongside politicians, senior civil servants, diplomats and economic and cultural leaders. Their studies inform thought and policy in the two countries, with a view to greater cooperation.
All these centres of research and exchange contribute to a continual reinforcement of the links between the United Kingdom and France. However, understanding their scope and effectiveness beyond quantitative data concerning numbers of exchange students, teachers, researchers and doctoral students (several hundred per year in the fields of human and social science alone) is clearly problematic. Without trumpeting it as a perfect measure, it seemed to us that the qualitative nature of the “Intellectual Entente Cordiale” might be better understood by examining the characteristics and subject matter of scientific publications. Therefore we shall focus on understanding the particularities of each country’s intellectual output before attempting to draw conclusions about what this might signify.

THE ENTENTE CORDIALE! A MATTER FOR THE INTELLECT

Without wishing to duplicate the bibliographical suggestions made elsewhere in this publication, it seems worth examining how, over the last ten years or so, French and British intellectuals have approached the relationship between the two countries. First of all, it must be emphasized that quite apart from a vast number of publications relating to linguistic studies (learning support books, dictionaries, and introductions to literature and civilization), this relationship has given rise to a substantial body of work, numbering more than five hundred titles in the social and human sciences alone. But of this number, relatively few have been dedicated to the Entente Cordiale itself or to a general overview of Franco-British relations, as were earlier publications by Neville H. Waites and Gilbert Martineau, the 1990 study by Françoise de la Serre, Jacques Leruez and Helen Wallace comparing the foreign policies of London and Paris,24 and of course the collection published by the French Foreign Ministry in 1996;25 those that do have this focus include books by Phillip Bell and Guy Bonnefoy, and recent publications linked to the 2004 anniversary by J. Viot, Christine Geoffroy, Maurice Vaïsse, Richard Mayne and Douglas Johnson.26 However this situation may simply reflect an obvious fact: the Entente Cordiale is a permanent state of affairs that does not need to be constantly re-examined and justified anew! It seems that the experts have taken their lead from the main publishers in the field, favouring reciprocal approaches over global perspectives. On the French side these publishers include Ellipses, Presses universitaires de France, Armand Colin, Ophrys-Ploton, Hachette, Aubier, La Documentation française and Autrement. Their British counterparts are Sage, Macmillan-Palgrave, Polity, Routledge, Blackwell, Ashgate, Verso and Weidenfeld & Nicolson among many others. Not to be forgotten are the many university presses (Bordeaux, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, Paris III et IV, Rennes, Grenoble, Cambridge, Oxford, Birmingham, Manchester, etc.).

WHAT THEN ARE THE PRIMARY DISCIPLINES AND SUBJECTS OF STUDY!

In France history and contemporary politics predominate. Between the two world wars, Elie Halévy and Paul Mantoux initiated the study of history over the long term; Roland Marx, François Crouzet, François Bédarida, Jacques Leruez and François-Charles Mougel27 used this approach in the 1960s and 70s, and it has persisted in recent digests by these authors and others such as Philippe Chassaigne, Bernard Cottret, Bertrand Lemonnier and François-Joseph Ruggiu.28 Whether they focus on general history or a particular domain (such as political, economic, diplomatic, social or cultural history), these works are neither dogmatic nor ideological in approach. One can detect the influence of the École des Annales in their methodologically unconstrained explorations of deep trends and psychological attitudes: it is clear in the authors’ emphasis on events, political developments and individual personalities. Also illuminative are the research themes favoured over the last ten years – epochs such as the 16th to 18th century “modern” period29 and the Victorian era;30 seminal events like the Wilson years and the Falklands war;31 the fascism of the 1930s;32 World War II;33 social matters such as poverty, religion and education,34 and studies of particular parts of the United Kingdom (Scotland, Ireland35). These publications evince a plurality of perspectives on British history, spanning diverse disciplines (history, political science, civilization studies) as well as the research priorities of different academic institutions. Likewise, the multitude of books dedicated to the great figures of British history, such as Queen Elizabeth I, Mary Stuart, the Duke of Buckingham, King Charles I, Wellington, Castlereagh, Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, Churchill and Margaret Thatcher,36 are testament to French fascination with individuals who “incarnate” British history. In similar vein are the many books about cities, initiated by Autrement with their volumes on Edinburgh, London and Oxford and continuing with a particular emphasis on the English capital, sometimes compared – as it was by Dickens – with Paris.37
While history dominates French intellectual output on Britain, it is not alone. Among the other social and human sciences there has not been much philosophy published apart from a few works on Hobbes, Locke and Wittgenstein. While there have been hardly any dedicated legal books,38 all the French guides to constitutional and private law emphasize the specificities of English (and more rarely Scottish) law, and comment on how European law, in rapid expansion over the last twenty years, has been superimposed on various “British” as well as French laws. Similarly, the end of the Thatcher years saw a slowing in the spate of economics titles, other than economic history books39 of the type written by François Crouzet. However the journals and studies devoted to Blairism tend to focus heavily on economics, which as we shall see is a sign of the recurrent French search for a British model applicable to Gallic realities. On the other hand political science has played an important role, alongside the history of ideas40 and contemporary history, in studies of Britain’s recent strength. Of note are the annual review of the Paris-based French Institute of International Relations,41 special issues of the journal Pouvoirs, the clutch of publications focusing on the 2001 British general election which saw the Labour party remain firmly in power,42 and certain (sometimes unfavourable) pronouncements on the current situation.43 It should be noted that the closer journal publication is to the time of the study, the more political science and investigative journalism come together in an approach that is as “political” as it is academic.44 In contrast general books on British institutions, political parties and attitudes remain distinctly pedagogical and explanatory in nature, avoiding any particular “ideological” viewpoint.45 In conclusion one might say that the French gaze on the United Kingdom attempts to be concrete and factual in essence, although as we shall see, this does not preclude the search for recommendations and even a model. However, current approaches are miles away from the Marxist-leaning and structuralist analyses prevailing between1960 and 1980, an era when Great Britain – due to her very particularity – seemed not to fit into the dominant principles of human and social science research in France (see for example, studies of the 17th century English revolutions, the Industrial Revolution and the strikes of the 1970s). This epistemological development can be clearly understood from a comparison of earlier and contemporary articles in serious journals such as the Annales, the Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine and indeed the Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique and the Revue Française de Sociologie. Only very recently have studies of Blairism acquired a somewhat polemical tone, echoing the French debates on globalization and social democracy.
French researchers are leaning less on Marx, Levi-Strauss and Bourdieu and more on Tocqueville and Raymond Aron; their British counterparts have likewise nuanced their intellectual approach away from “ideological” frameworks towards a decidedly more pragmatic focus in their studies of France. This in any case conforms to the English tradition of the “normative” overview. The Marxist-inclined legacy of Eric John Hobsbawn and Christopher Hill has thus given way to the more “liberal” or “neo-historic” approaches taken by philosophers descended from Bertrand Russell and Isaiah Berlin, social theorists such as Anthony Giddens and political scientists like Jack Hayward. For them, the arbitration of facts seems to be the most appropriate lens through which to analyze, understand and indeed compare. Note however that the British are still very partial to the work of the French theorists, as can be seen from the number of studies and translations of Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard, Bourdieu, Braudel, Febvre, Michel Foucault, Lacan and that old classic Descartes! This would seem to indicate Britain’s continuing interest in intellectual frameworks and indeed global interpretative systems, at a time when the French seem to be rediscovering the virtues of Britain’s traditional empiricism – especially since the apparent failure of the great global interpretative systems indicated by the fall of Eastern Europe and the Ussr between 1989 and 1991 and recent developments in the Chinese political landscape. In any case, British publishing of books and articles on France continues at a brisk pace, thanks in large part to journals such as French Studies and the journal of the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France. As in France, law and economics don’t feature very heavily in these works; when they do, it is most often in the context of more general studies of European legal and economic systems. French approaches as a potential model seem to have gone out of fashion, whereas in previous decades both law “à la française” and the notion of mixed capitalism which originated in Paris were considered worthy of reflection if not enactment. Sociology and the study of attitudes are better represented, especially through Gender Studies. This discipline stems from a feminist movement born in France in the aftermath of the Second World War but which has crossed the Channel to become extremely fashionable, and an academic discipline in its own right: the bibliography is a clear illustration of the quantitative gap between French and British output in this field.46 The special contribution of broad-spectrum socio-cultural approaches, such as the highly empathic work of Theodore Zeldin and the transnational studies of Arthur Marwick,47 is their endeavour to situate “insular” and “continental” allusions in the context of each other, so as to draw out, through the use of comparative examples, the specificity of what still remains the British model.
However it is clear that just as in France, the two leading disciplines with regard to Gallo-centric studies remain history and political science. Political science studies focus primarily on the institutions and history of the Fifth Republic. In the tradition of the magnificent studies of the Fourth Republic undertaken at Oxford in the 1950s by F. Williams, a number of researchers have shed new, well-documented and often fascinating light on the government and governance of contemporary France. These include Britons Vincent Wright, Howard Machin, A. Cole, Jack Hayward, David S. Bell, Anne Stevens and Nick Hewlett, and French researchers living in Great Britain such as Alain Guyomarch and Philippe Marlière at the London School of Economics.48 Also in this area are the studies published by Dublin City University research group, headed by Briton Robert Elgie.49 It should be noted that these lecturer-researchers, along with their French counterparts, engage in the important exchanges that nourish inter-university Franco-British relations. These take place in London and Oxford as well as in Paris (notably at the Institut d’Études Politiques); in this way the notion of cross-fertilization at the base of the social and human sciences is made manifest.
The British approach to historical studies is different from the French, with a heavy emphasis on the biography of charismatic characters. These political and domestic heroes and heroines – Eleanor of Aquitaine, Madame de Pompadour, Madame de Montespan and the major 17th and 18th century courtesans, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Napoleon I, Napoleon III, de Gaulle – are often depicted with an emphasis on their most “human” aspects.50 As with political science, there are hardly any historical studies of particular regions of France, except for cities such as Paris, which seems to fascinate the British.51 However, major events in French history – especially the 1789 French Revolution, the First Empire and the Second World War52 – have been the subject of a great many British studies. Research covering longer periods has favoured the Ancien Régime and the post-1945 years.53 In this field the Oxford University Press series encompasses research on France undertaken on both sides of the Channel.54 The focus is currently on the modern era and contemporary times, as it is with French research on Great Britain; the Middle Ages and to a lesser extent the 19th century, so widely studied in previous decades, seem to have fallen out of fashion.
As we have seen, while separate areas of interest do exist, there are important similarities in the disciplines, periods and themes studied in each country through a combination of human and social science approaches.
At this point the question is how to interpret this body of research.

UNDERSTANDING AND EXPLAINING THE MEANING OF THE INTELLECTUAL ENTENTE CORDIALE

In both France and the United Kingdom, history and political science dominate research on the neighbour across the Channel; a glance at the list of relevant publications makes it quite clear that this is because of the need to understand the partner’s identity and particularity. Both sides seemto experience this as an enigma. As the journalist Jeremy Paxman says,55 how is one to understand the fact that 12 million Britons visit France every year and more than 100,000 British families possess a secondary residence there, when francophobia is so prevalent in the British media?
On the other hand, what does it mean when 250,000 French people work in Great Britain and thousands of tourists, school children and students go there every year to discover the sites and the language of Shakespeare’s country, while Albion is still presented as perfidious, or at the very least different? As André Siegfried used to say at the beginning of his lectures, “England is an island”; as for the British, the Continent starts – now and forever – at the ferry terminals and where the Chunnel, inaugurated by Elizabeth II and President Mitterrand in 1994, emerges from under the sea.
An analysis of the works published and research conducted on either side of the Channel shows that one can’t understand Franco-British relations without taking context into account; that is, the view that each partner has not only of its neighbour but also of its own situation and destiny. Naturally we shall not be conducting an in-depth study here of the work that French and British researchers have done on their own countries over the last ten years. However, some reference to their work will help us to understand the mindset of those of their colleagues who are experts on the other country, for it is true that each generation, each decade develops a different Weltanschauung from its predecessor.
So what is the general intellectual context within which the French and British have been examining each other over the last ten years?
On the English side, the uncertainties and questions of the sixties and seventies were well illustrated by Sir Nicholas Henderson in his valedictory despatch “Britain’s decline; its causes and consequences.”56 This emphasis on the “British Disease” of industrial unrest has since given way to a more sanguine and optimistic view, that of a country more sure of its values, its intellectual footing, and its future. Whatever else one may think, Thatcherism and Blairism (the only two examples of “ideologies incarnate” in the history of British politics), have steered the inhabitants of Albion on a clear course: “Britain is back,” declared Margaret Thatcher on coming to power in 1979. On the other hand France seems to have become less sure of herself since the time of de Gaulle, our principal instance of “ideology incarnate” since 1945! Political and partisan trends (Pompidolism, Giscardism, unity and then pluralism of the left, Chiracism), have followed one after another since the seventies, alone or in complex cohabitations, without providing the country with a lucid sense of its historic destiny or its future. This has led to increasing doubts about values and the political, social and economic system. Today the theme of the “French miracle” referred to by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the seventies has been replaced by that of decline.57 We can thus see that French and British ideas about each other are often defined in relation to history, because this allows events to be seen within the dynamic context of time. But what history?
For the French it is imperative to study history over the long term.
First, the lengthy period of growth in the 16th, 17th and 18th century in England, which until now has been the subject of little research.58 Why? Because that was the time when England, having lost her Continental empire (Aquitaine in 1453, Calais in 1558), was gradually becoming the United Kingdom and turning to maritime expeditions to develop, steadily, into the world’s leading naval and colonial power. This was also the period when the country flaunted itself before admiring French eyes as a political, economic and social model, founded on already “modern” civic values and on strong nationalism.59 So in this research there is an acknowledgement of both success – the politico-ideological balance celebrated by Montesquieu – and the dynamic of domination emphasized by Voltaire: “What makes England powerful is that since Elizabeth’s time all factions have contributed to the prioritisation of commerce.”60
While researchers may dwell on this historical burgeoning, their formerly flattering perspective on the English apogee of the 19th century is now being presented by historians and students of civilization in a more ambivalent manner, with the downside – social problems and economic decline – being contrasted with the political and imperial achievements. Somehow the Victorian era is portrayed much less as an unequivocal high point, and more as a complex transitional phase between the past and modern times, where the UK no longer really appears as a model but as a first example of “superpower” in the context of emerging globalization.61
Comparable perceptual adjustments have occurred regarding the 20th century, the period which has given rise to the greatest number of studies in the human and social sciences. Research, rather pessimistic in the thirties and the years 1960-80,62 has been markedly more favourable since then, illustrating the return to favour of the “British model.” This applies to institutions as well as the development of political parties and administrative reforms,63 the press, urban-rural relationships and socio-cultural evolution.64 This positive attitude extends to the economic and diplomatic domains in evaluations of the Thatcher government and Blair’s first term; however there are some criticisms – if not of actual policies then of the ideological bias that underpins them. One common issue drives this reappraisal, namely the rediscovery of the central role of the elites which Tocqueville had already underlined: “the English aristocracy has much the same passions and prejudices as all other aristocracies, however it is not founded on birth, an unattainable attribute, but on money, which anyone can acquire, and this difference allows it to survive while others succumb to the people or to kings.65” The present writer’s research on the Establishment since 1945, like that of Antoine Capet on the ruling classes of the thirties, and Maurice Goldring66 on the formation of elites in France and England, all emphasize the permanence and flexibility of a constantly adapting elite system. The Prince of Lampedusa applied the formula to the Sicily of the 19th century: “Things must change in order to remain the same” (The Leopard). All these studies point – with various nuances of course – to the revitalisation of a British model of good government and good governance strongly reminiscent of the kind the French admired in the 18th century, comparing it with the deficiencies of the Ancien Régime of the Bourbons. Of course it remains to be seen whether this trend, favourable to Great Britain, will survive into the future: forthcoming appraisals of Blairism will certainly constitute the main test.
By contrast, what sort of France are the British looking at? The land of the Gauls is not universally seen as a model, nor as an anti-model, but rather as an experimental field. Historians are fond of describing the progressive slide of the “Great Nation” from the pre-eminent part it played under the Ancien Régime and at the beginning of the 19th century to the less exalted position it has occupied since the 20th century, along with the main turning points to this slide – the Revolution, the Empire, and the Second World War. Hence the emphasis researchers have placed on the “peaks” of French history rather than on chronological continuity. Furthermore these peaks are often presented as hiccups or failures. Whether the subject is the Revolution of 1789, the First Empire, the defeat of 1940 and the Nazi occupation, or less famous episodes like the Albigensian crisis in the Middle Ages
or the Algerian War of 1954-62, France is often portrayed somewhat sombrely. It does not seem to matter whether responsibility for the situation is collective or – as it very often was – personal (as with the great figures of the Ancien Régime, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; Napoleon I; Pétain; Mitterrand or the intellectuals of the 20th century67). This chequered, one might even say chaotic, British vision of France is studded with penetrating questions about the French mentality and more particularly the apparent loss of energy in present-day France. Gone is the time when British intellectuals would link the grandeur of de Gaulle to the power of France under Louis XIV or Napoleon I, who used to be portrayed as a luminary of European history. Instead, studies of the country’s current difficulties and investigations of the true nature of the Fifth Republic echo those of contemporary French researchers.68 Like Burke, Thackeray and Dickens, but this time from a historical, political science or civilization-studies perspective, British researchers are carrying out a sort of critical psychoanalysis of France and the French; however one can still scarcely speak of a uniform perspective, let alone a fixed or lasting one!
As one can see, understanding leads naturally to explaining.
The current situation embodies once again the superiority-inferiority dialectic which has almost always characterized Franco-British relations. Between 1945 and 1990 and especially from 1960 to 1980 the French view of England echoed Rivarol’s triumphant exclamation: “when England needs everyone, everyone needs France”69! The British, without seeking to emulate France, certainly took an interest, sometimes admiring and occasionally a little jealous or regretful, in her internal successes (especially post-1958), and in the rising star of her European diplomacy – both of which were in sharp contrast to their own difficulties. This attitude is clear from the tone of the English contributions to the collection by François Crouzet, François Bédarida and Douglas Johnson published under the auspices of the Franco-British Council in 1979. The situation has once again changed: today Great Britain perceives herself as strong, as we can see from the number of memoirs and political manifestos published by her leaders (Margaret Thatcher, Edward Heath, Nigel Lawson, T. Benn, John Major, Roy Jenkins, and of course Tony Blair and his team70). France however – and this is a sign of her internal doubts – has produced only Jacques Attali’s Verbatim on the Mitterand presidency, and after the presidential election in 2002, writings by Lionel Jospin and Hubert Védrine on European and global issues.71
The seminal collection of articles by François Crouzet,
De la supériorité de l’Angleterre sur la France [England’s superiority to France],72 published in 1985, seems to have set the tone for the current perception of Franco-British relations.73 On both sides of the Channel the names of Adam Smith, Macaulay, Burke, Spencer and the theoreticians of New Labour are bandied about far more than those of John Stuart Mill, the Fabians or the Old Labourites: only Keynes and Beveridge have escaped the neo-liberal wave sweeping through politics and academe.74 Whereas in Margaret Thatcher’s day British intellectuals frequently made reference to France, for example describing the Prime Minister as “the Grantham Gaullist” or criticizing her neo-liberal policies by contrasting them with French conceptions of the welfare state, during the nineties, and especially the period after 1997, Blairism has been the main subject of ideological debate not only in the UK where it is predominant, but also among the French political classes where it is discussed on the right and the left, fed by an equally lively debate among intellectuals and in the media. Has Great Britain thus been able to take a kind of intellectual revenge on the “French miracle,” which would explain the resurgence of francophobia in the British media, or is it that France has slumped back into pessimism about its own model? While England may seem to have the upper hand at the moment, on closer inspection one should perhaps be more prudent and stick to the wise words of Elizabeth II on her visit to Paris in April 2004, when she simply praised the interdependence and the divergences that unite and separate France and the United Kingdom, without seeking to create a hierarchy: “We are natural partners. Of course, we shall never agree on everything. Vive la différence et vive l’Entente cordiale75!” This is probably the best way of interpreting the relative positions of the two countries: as a cyclical phase in a common history now a hundred years old, from which the risk of war is entirely excluded but where competition is still rampant. What light does this shed on the development of the Entente Cordiale over its hundred years?

THE ENTENTE CORDIALE AND ITS PlACE IN HISTORY PERSPECTIVE ON A CENTURY

The agreement of 1904 was neither an alliance nor a declaration of friendship. It was a pact, which some have considered cynical, for the amicable settlement of real and virtual conflicts between two world powers which had existed in relative peace with each other since 1815.
But it was its diplomatic and political potential that raised it beyond the relationship formed between Louis-Philippe and Victoria into a project with a future, based at one and the same time on realism, sentiment and a certain distance, and contained in two words: “Entente Cordiale.”
To appreciate the meaning of the Entente Cordiale one must keep in mind its intended pertinence for the future, and also its implicit commitments.
In other words, one must take the sleeping partner(s) into account. From 1904 until 1945, the Entente Cordiale was dominated by the lurking presence of Germany. It was the French obsession with “revenge” and the British fear of commercial and naval competition from Wilhelm’s Reich that led to the emergence of the Triple Entente and the engagement of France and Britain in the First World War against the Central Powers.76 From a position of need in 1904, France at this point became a partner to the United Kingdom in an equal and complementary relationship. In fact, the Entente evolved into a military-strategic alliance which would carry the two countries to victory through arduous common struggles,77 though the Russian ally defected on the way and the Allies benefited from the broad support of the United States, which entered the war in April 1917 as an associate of the Franco-British alliance.
However, the Paris Peace Conference did not guarantee the future of this new alliance. London managed to obtain maximum territorial and economic advantages for the United Kingdom and its Dominions, while succeeding, thanks to the non-ratification of the treaties by the American Senate, in disengaging itself from all promises relating to French security. In contrast Paris, notwithstanding the return of Alsace-Lorraine and several colonial territories and mandates, was left isolated and concerned for the future by Washington’s resumption of its traditional isolationism and London’s return to a rather “formal” conception of the Entente Cordiale.78 Furthermore, except for the Locarno Treaty of 1925 by which London undertook to guarantee the Franco-German frontier, and the Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928 (which brought most countries of the world together in a common renunciation of war), Paris and London were in constant confrontation between 1919 and 1932. There were disagreements over reparations, the Greco-Turkish conflict, monetary policy, the management of the 1929 economic crisis, and above all the German question.79 The United Kingdom, worried about possible French supremacy in Europe, supported – for diplomatic and also economic and financial reasons – the re-establishment of German power. Meanwhile France, left without the support of the great powers, turned to the small states of Europe and tried to protect her security by entering into co-operation with Germany. She even advocated for the first time, in 1930, the unification of Europe as a foundation for durable peace on the Continent and between the two “hereditary enemies.”But these early efforts came to grief with the economic crisis and the political victory of the Nazis in 1933.
In the thirties, as the German threat was reborn, France and England drew closer to each other but paid more attention to the sirens of appeasement than to calls for resistance, with Paris abandoning its earlier diplomatic initiatives and taking up London’s pacifist position without giving the British establishment any indication of its actual strength or resolve.80 In any case, the United Kingdom was first to declare war on the Third Reich, on 3 September 1939, followed a few hours later by a France more vassal than partner in what became again, but in a less favourable context than in 1914, a new anti-Germanic Alliance.
The ups and downs of the phoney war and the collapse of France in May-June 1940 – despite Churchill’s last-minute offer, on 16 May, of a “Franco-British union” – confirmed the British in both their pessimistic view of the fate of the Third Republic and their determination to fight, alone, for the defence of democracy against totalitarianism. While the future friendship between the French and British peoples was saved by Churchill’s prompt support for General de Gaulle’s Free French, and the co-operation which linked the Resistance to London for four years, it was to Washington that London turned to create the all-important Western solidarity. This became the heart of the future Grand Alliance of 1942, justifying a posteriori André Siegfried’s remark: “the natural reaction of England, when things go badly for her on the Continent, is to turn to the other side, seeking refuge, one might say, among the Anglo-Saxon peoples.81” Henceforth the United States would become the sleeping partner essential to Franco-British relations; this was borne out in military encounters and political debates throughout the Second World War.82 While in 1944-45 France owed the restoration of her independence, her colonial empire and her status as a great power to Great Britain, Great Britain didn’t hesitate to flaunt herself as one of the three Great Powers, one of the principal victors over the Axis and Japan. After Churchill and de Gaulle’s triumphant procession together along the Champs-Élysées, in the autumn of 1944, what was to become of the Entente Cordiale?
As was emphasized at the time in an interesting report from Chatham House, it was important to preserve and reinforce it.83 It was in this spirit that the Treaty of Dunkirk – the first true peace-time treaty of alliance between London and Paris – was signed in 1947. This text still concerned itself with the German threat and as such served as a basis for the Treaty of Brussels in 1948, which enlarged the alliance to include the Benelux countries. But the outbreak of the Cold War caused a rapid shuffling of the cards: Franco-British relations would henceforth be contained within the framework of Western solidarity. The 1947 Marshall Plan and the 1949 creation of Nato laid the foundations, reinforced by the close ties formed between Paris and Washington under the Fourth Republic and the “special relationship,” that permanent bond of friendship between the United States and Great Britain. America established herself, more than ever, as the sleeping partner in the Entente Cordiale, while the Ussr became once more, to an even greater extent than between the two wars, the designated enemy. There remained the German question. Having backed the creation of the Federal Republic in 1949, the Western powers integrated it into the defence of Europe and the free world (Western European Union and Nato, 1954-55). But France wanted to go further. As London had not embraced the cause of European unification – although it had been first mooted by Churchill in Zurich in 1946 and again at the Conference at The Hague in 1948 – it was Paris which, with the 1950 Monnet-Schumann Plan, launched the European process, built on the crucial foundation stone of Franco-German reconciliation. Henceforth Germany, still a sleeping partner in the Entente Cordiale, was no longer the enemy but a potential companion. The Europe of Six [Germany, Holland, France, Belgium, Luxemburg and Italy] was really born with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951; deeper ties followed in 1957 with the Treaties of Rome that founded Euratom and the Common Market. London refused at every step to be included, marking the beginning of the “Euro-British misunderstandings.”84
The Suez crisis in 1956 was a turning point in the history of France and Britain. United in their rejection of Nasser’s ambitions, the two countries were forced to evacuate the canal zone under American-Soviet pressure:that was the end of their independent role in world affairs. It was also the end of their colonial domination: decolonisation had already started in 1947, and from then on their colonial power declined very quickly, coming in essence to completion by the mid-sixties. The French and the British would learn different lessons from 1956: for London, the importance of maintaining close military and diplomatic ties with Washington (Nassau Agreement, 1962) in order to ensure Britain’s central position within the West; for Paris, especially after the birth of the Fifth Republic in 1958, the need to affirm her independence and multilateralism, particularly in relation to the United States, and also to strengthen Europe, as a vehicle for French leadership. Between 1958 and 1970, France dominated Europe. In fact, the rapid increase in French power and the efficacy of the friendship between Paris and Bonn pushed London into a painful about-turn: in 1961 and 1967 the United Kingdom applied to join the Common Market, and was humiliated in 1963 and 1967 by Paris’s successive vetoes. Chatham House spoke of the “Uneasy Entente,”85 and in 1969 Harold Wilson, annoyed and anxious, rejected the project – the Soames Plan – for a triple directorate (France, the German Federal Republic and the United Kingdom) proposed by de Gaulle: it was quickly denounced as a sign of supremacy-seeking on the part of the “Great Nation.”
It was Georges Pompidou and Edward Heath who revitalized Franco-British cooperation, in order to distance themselves from a United States bogged down in the Vietnam war, and to counter the resurgence of German power, then in full-blown Ostpolitik. London joined the European Community on 1st January 1973, a decision made definitive by the referendum of June 1975. But although Europe became one of the new sleeping partners in the Entente Cordiale, British membership did not really tighten the links between Paris and London: Great Britain, particularly under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, contested her share of the budget, objected to European policies, and took exception to the power vested in Brussels, while at the same time reviving her “special relationship” with Washington. France on her side gave new impetus to the European dynamic and the Franco-German connection, as can be seen from the two pairs Giscard d’Estaing-Schmidt and then Kohl-Mitterrand. At this point Paris became the target of two serious challenges: as direct obstacle to British interests (the 1975-84 budget rebate crisis; successive “wars” – over mutton in 1979, turkey in 1981, and mad cow from 1986 to 2002; criticism of Paris’s role in the Falklands War in 1982), and as the principal force behind European integration, raising again the spectre of a dangerous, even hostile “Continent.” Only the year 1991 marked a break in the torrent of antagonism: the two countries, resigned to the reunification of Germany in 1989-90, took part together in the Gulf War; signed together, but with caveats on London’s side, the Maastricht Treaty furthering the European ideal; and rejoiced in the final fall of socialism in Eastern Europe and in the Ussr. These three events reduced them de facto to the role of medium European powers under American “influence.”
The nineties marked a new stage in the troubled history of the Entente Cordiale. The United Kingdom’s identity and convictions were bolstered by the reforms of the New Right and then New Labour: affirmation of the nation’s European destiny was essential despite the wave of Euro-scepticism sweeping public opinion and part of the ruling class. France, goaded by internal problems, also saw Europe as something to aim towards, a way of regaining a position of leadership. The shared vision of a “federation of nation-states,” the acceptance of a constitution, the establishment of a single market, and the prospect of European defence and diplomacy seemed to unite the two countries, against the backdrop of a Union which grew from 12 members in 1990 to 15 in 1995 to 25 in 2004.86 But this political convergence, anyway more tactical than strategic, still comes up against the problem of the sleeping partners. Most importantly the United States, whose Atlanticism and unilateralism have contributed, especially under the presidency of George W. Bush, to the rift between London and Paris.
Also Europe, which France and Britain want to use as a vehicle for, respectively, their ideological visions and their aspirations to international leadership; however their models are different and the Union aspires more to parity and unity than obedience to a new “master,” especially if there are two candidates for the job! Finally Germany, which Paris wishes to retain as a special friend and which London, to break its isolation, would like to uncouple from France to form a new “triple directorate,” in itself a difficult trio and an idea which seems hardly compatible with the aims of European integration. Is there no longer a place for the Entente Cordiale?
It does not seem so: celebrations of the 2004 centenary show that despite or because of the ordeals undergone together, the Franco-British Entente is alive and well and is not, in essence, under threat. Besides, in terms of population, economic power, diplomatic and military situation, the two countries are much closer today than they were a century ago.
But it is important to see that their relationship is cyclical and reflects, simultaneously and dialectically, both the real power relation between the states and the collective imaginings of the two peoples it unites: which means it exists both as a living force and as a construct. It also means that this Entente Cordiale is a response to a deliberate quest for a common destiny. Today, that destiny cannot be other than European and, if it takes care to be balanced and non-competitive, instructive and not prescriptive, the Entente can become not only a model of co-operation between two of the oldest nations on the Continent, but also a blueprint for future relations between the states and populations of the European Union. France and Great Britain, these “rival companions,” as a former British ambassador to Paris has called them,87 will thus have accomplished an “exemplary” historical mission, impossible to foresee in 1904! The social and human sciences have a role to play, and it is an important one, in indicating to citizens and political leaders both the road already travelled and that ahead of us on the path to peace and mutual understanding.