Aristide Briand

Aristide Briand

In office
29 July 1929 – 2 November 1929
Preceded by Raymond Poincaré
Succeeded by André Tardieu
In office
28 November 1925 – 20 July 1926
Preceded by Paul Painlevé
Succeeded by Édouard Herriot
In office
16 January 1921 – 15 January 1922
Preceded by Georges Leygues
Succeeded by Raymond Poincaré
In office
29 October 1915 – 20 March 1917
Preceded by René Viviani
Succeeded by Alexandre Ribot
In office
21 January 1913 – 22 March 1913
Preceded by Raymond Poincaré
Succeeded by Louis Barthou
In office
24 July 1909 – 2 March 1911
Preceded by Georges Clemenceau
Succeeded by Ernest Monis
Born 28 March 1862
Died March 7, 1932(1932-03-07) (aged 69)
Political party SFIO
PRS

Aristide Briand (French pronunciation: [aʁistid bʁiɑ̃]; 28 March 1862 – 7 March 1932) was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic and won the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.

Contents

Early life

He was born in Nantes, Loire-Atlantique of a bourgeois family. He attended the Nantes Lycée, where, in 1877, he developed a close friendship with Jules Verne.[1] He studied law, and soon went into politics, associating himself with the most advanced movements, writing articles for the anarchist journal Le Peuple, and directing the Lanterne for some time. From this he passed to the Petite République, leaving it to found L'Humanité, in collaboration with Jean Jaurès.

Activism

At the same time he was prominent in the movement for the formation of trade unions, and at the congress of working men at Nantes in 1894 he secured the adoption of the labor union idea against the adherents of Jules Guesde. From that time, Briand was one of the leaders of the French Socialist Party. In 1902, after several unsuccessful attempts, he was elected deputy. He declared himself a strong partisan of the union of the Left in what was known as the Bloc, in order to check the reactionary Deputies of the Right.

From the beginning of his career in the Chamber of Deputies, Briand was occupied with the question of the separation of church and state. He was appointed reporter of the commission charged with the preparation of the 1905 law on separation, and his masterly report at once marked him out as one of the coming leaders. He succeeded in carrying his project through with but slight modifications, and without dividing the parties upon whose support he relied.

He was the principal author of the law of separation, but, not content with preparing it, he wished to apply it as well. The ministry of Maurice Rouvier was allowing disturbances during the taking of inventories of church property, a clause of the law for which Briand was not responsible. Consequently he accepted the portfolio of Public Instruction and Worship in the Sarrien ministry (1906). So far as the Chamber was concerned his success was complete. But the acceptance of a position in a bourgeois ministry led to his exclusion from the Unified Socialist Party (March 1906). As opposed to Jaurès, he contended that the Socialists should co-operate actively with the Radicals in all matters of reform, and not stand aloof to await the complete fulfillment of their ideals.

Prime Minister of France

Briand succeeded Clemenceau as Prime Minister in 1909, serving until 1911, and served again for a few months in 1913. In October 1915, following on French defeats in the First World War, Briand again became Prime Minister, and, for the first time, Foreign Minister, succeeding René Viviani and Théophile Delcassé respectively. His tenure was not particularly successful, and he resigned in March 1917 as a result of disagreements over the prospective Nivelle Offensive, to be succeeded by Alexandre Ribot.

Briand returned to power in 1921, but his efforts to come to an agreement over reparations with the Germans failed in the wake of German intransigence, and he was succeeded by the more bellicose Raymond Poincaré. In the wake of the Ruhr Crisis, however, Briand's more conciliatory style became more acceptable, and he returned to the Quai d'Orsay in 1925, remaining foreign minister until his death in 1932.

Briand negotiated the Briand-Ceretti Agreement with the Vatican giving the French government a role in the appointment of Catholic bishops.

Aristide Briand received the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize together with Gustav Stresemann of Germany for the Locarno Treaties (Austen Chamberlain of the United Kingdom had won a share of the Peace Prize a year earlier for the same agreement). A 1927 proposal by Briand and United States Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg for a universal pact outlawing war led the following year to the Pact of Paris, aka the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

The cordial relations between Briand and Stresemann, the leading statesmen of their respective countries, were cut short by the unexpected death of Stresemann in 1929 and of Briand in 1932.

European union

Briand is noted as among the first to propose a union of European nations, in a speech in favor of a European Union in the League of Nations on 8 September 1929, and in 1930, who wrote his "Memorandum on the Organization of a Regime of European Federal Union" for the Government of France.[2]

Governments

Briand's first Government, 24 July 1909 - 3 November 1910

Briand's second Government, 3 November 1910 - 2 March 1911

Changes

Briand's third and fourth Governments, 21 January - 22 March 1913

Briand's fifth Government, 29 October 1915 - 12 December 1916

Changes

Briand's sixth Government, 12 December 1916 - 20 March 1917

Changes

Briand's seventh Government, 16 January 1921 - 15 January 1922

Briand's eighth Government, 28 November 1925 - 9 March 1926

Changes

Briand's ninth Government, 9 March - 23 June 1926

Changes

Briand's tenth Government, 23 June - 19 July 1926

Briand's eleventh Government, 29 July - 3 November 1929

See also

References

  1. ↑ Aristide Briand - Biography
  2. ↑ D. Weigall and P. Stirk, editors, The Origins and Development of the European Community, Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992, pp. 11-15.

External links

Political offices
Preceded by
Jean-Baptiste Bienvenu-Martin		 Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts
1906 – 1908		 Succeeded by
Gaston Doumergue
Minister of Worship
1906 – 1911		 Succeeded by
Ernest Monis
Preceded by
Edmond Guyot-Dessaigne		 Minister of Justice
1908 – 1909		 Succeeded by
Louis Barthou
Preceded by
Georges Clemenceau		 Prime Minister of France
1909 – 1911		 Succeeded by
Ernest Monis
Minister of the Interior
1909– 1911
Preceded by
Jean Brun		 interim Minister of War
1911		 Succeeded by
Maurice Berteaux
Preceded by
Jean Cruppi		 Minister of Justice
1912 – 1913		 Succeeded by
Louis Barthou
Preceded by
Raymond Poincaré		 Prime Minister of France
1913		 Succeeded by
Louis Barthou
Preceded by
Théodore Steeg		 Minister of the Interior
1913		 Succeeded by
Louis Lucien Klotz
Preceded by
Jean-Baptiste Bienvenu-Martin		 Minister of Justice
1914 – 1915		 Succeeded by
René Viviani
Preceded by
René Viviani		 Prime Minister of France
1915 – 1917		 Succeeded by
Alexandre Ribot
Minister of Foreign Affairs
1915 – 1917
Preceded by
Georges Leygues		 Prime Minister of France
1921 – 1922		 Succeeded by
Raymond Poincaré
Minister of Foreign Affairs
1921 – 1922
Preceded by
Édouard Herriot		 Minister of Foreign Affairs
1925 – 1926		 Succeeded by
Édouard Herriot
Preceded by
Paul Painlevé		 Prime Minister of France
1925 – 1926
Preceded by
Édouard Herriot		 Minister of Foreign Affairs
1926 – 1932		 Succeeded by
Pierre Laval
Preceded by
Raymond Poincaré		 Prime Minister of France
1929		 Succeeded by
André Tardieu
Laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize

Aristide Briand / Gustav Stresemann / Austen Chamberlain (1926) · Ferdinand Buisson / Ludwig Quidde (1927) · Frank B. Kellogg (1929) · Nathan Söderblom (1930) · Jane Addams / Nicholas Butler (1931) · Norman Angell (1933) · Arthur Henderson (1934) · Carl von Ossietzky (1935) · Carlos Saavedra Lamas (1936) · Robert Cecil (1937) · Nansen International Office for Refugees (1938) · International Committee of the Red Cross (1944) · Cordell Hull (1945) · Emily Balch / John Mott (1946) · Friends Service Council / American Friends Service Committee (1947) · John Boyd Orr (1949) · Ralph Bunche (1950)
Complete roster · 1901–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present