1st Edition

French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918-1940 The Decline and Fall of a Great Power

Edited By Robert Boyce Copyright 1998

    French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918-1940 outlines France's strategies for protection and appeasement during this period and places interwar relations in a larger European context.
    This book examines:
    * relationships with key countries such as Italy and Russia
    * the significance of interwar France to 20th Century European integration
    * the historical context of the policies
    * the setbacks and defeats of the period and how they should be evaluated

    Notes on contributors, List of abbreviations, Introduction, 1 France at the Paris Peace Conference: addressing the dilemmas of security, 2 France and the politics of steel, from the Treaty of Versailles to the International Steel Entente, 1919–1926, 3 Raymond Poincaré and the Ruhr crisis, 4 Economics and Franco-Belgian relations in the inter-war period, 5 Reparations and war debts: the restoration of French financial power, 1919–1929, 6 Business as usual: the limits of French economic diplomacy, 1926–1933, 7 René Massigli and Germany, 1919–1938, 8 Franco-Italian relations in flux, 1918–1940, 9 In defence of the Maginot Line: security policy, domestic politics and the economic depression in France, 10 A douce and dextrous persuasion: French propaganda and Franco-American relations in the 1930s, 11 Daladier, Bonnet and the decision-making process during the Munich crisis, 1938, 12 Intelligence and the end of appeasement, 13 France and the phoney war, 1939–1940, Index

    Biography

    Robert Boyce is Senior Lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is editor (with Esmonde Robertson) of Paths to War: New Essays on the Origins of the Second World War (1989) and author of British Capitalism at the Crossroads, 1919-1932: A Study in Politics, Economics and International Relations (1987). His book, Fatal Estrangement: Franco-British Relations from Versailles to Dunkirk, is in preparation.