Mister Unpopular: François Hollande and the Exercise of Presidential Leadership, 2012–14

This article examines the first two years of François Hollande's presidential term from a leadership perspective. The central argument is that while Hollande has sometimes been unlucky in the face of unanticipated events and severely constrained by contextual factors outside of his control, notably France's low levels of economic growth, he has also displayed a lack of certain essential leadership qualities. He failed to grasp the scale of the economic situation in the early months of his tenure and so lost precious time in fully addressing the need for structural reforms and engaging in a persuasive pedagogic narrative. In addition, his public communication—an essential leadership quality in the era of mediatised politics—has been poor. Hollande's attempt to relaunch his presidential leadership following the disastrous set of mid-term election results in 2014 marks the start of a new phase in his tenure of the office.     

First Lessons in Neo-Colonialism: The Personalisation of Relations between African Politicians and French Officials in sub-Saharan Africa, 1956–66

In scholarly debates, ‘French neo-colonialism’ is defined as the social history of relations between Francophile African elites and French decision-makers in African policy, and it is frequently interpreted as a sinister manipulation of rather passive African populations. Exploring the newly accessible French archival documents, it is now possible to understand better how French officials became neo-colonial players, from the frustration of the last days of colonialism, to a new model of friend and foe in sub-Saharan Africa. A complex and highly emotional interplay of relations with African leaders accounted for the seemingly rational ‘neo-colonialist’ behaviour of French civil servants from 1955 at least to the decade after decolonisation.     

Sexual Threat and Settler Society: ‘Black Perils’ in Kenya,c. 1907–30

This article investigates America's deepening involvement in the politics, finance and international trade of francophone West Africa in the decade after World War II. It does so by analysing two constituencies of opinion: the US consular service across French West Africa and the network of American business interests then developing throughout the region. These actors, although closest to the events described, have yet to receive much attention in analyses of US policymaking in Africa. The reports, intelligence estimates, and opinions of consular officials and US businessmen were pivotal to the attitudinal formation of policymakers in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, few of whom had much experience of West African affairs. The article traces American engagement with the post-war politics of French black Africa, and discerns a shift in US policy interests from concern with economic development, investment potential and improved living standards to more narrowly strategic concerns. By 1952 the promise of US-driven economic modernization had given way to a reductive vision of West African decolonisation informed by Cold War calculations of political advantage.     

Modernisation without ‘banalisation’: Towards a new era in French African aid relations?

This article considers recent changes in France's assistance programme to black Africa. It looks at the historic logic underpinning France's aid policies and structures; examines the latest reforms; and attributes these to the election of a reformist socialist government, a favourable political climate, globalisation and the constraints of EMU. The main obstacle to reform is said to be President Chirac who remains attached to the old logic of French African relations. Ultimately, however, it is not the struggle between modernisers and traditionalists but pressures from France's African and European partners which will determine the future of French aid policy.     

Economic despondency and social division: A political review of the year, 1996

Verschave, F. X., La Françafrique. Le plus long scandale de la république (Stock 1998). 379 pp. 130F ISBN 2 234 04948 2

Gourévitch, J.‐P., L'Afrique, le fric la France. L'aide, la dette, l'immigration, l'avenir: vérités et mensonges (Le pré aux Clercs, 1997) 372 pp., 110F. ISBN 2 84228 022 9     

Intertextual geopolitics and La Carte et le territoire: a cautionary tale for UNESCO and the repas gastronomique des Français?

ABSTRACT

La Carte et le territoire features a France in decline, saved, entre autres, by attracting foreign tourists with ‘heritagised’ French food. Eight days after the novel won the 2010 Prix Goncourt, the repas gastronomique des Français was inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list (ICH). Considering Houellebecq’s use of tropes of culinary heritage alongside the French ICH bid reveals parallels in their manipulation of culinary heritage to create globally marketable products. Yet the motivations and ramifications of the ‘gastrodiplomacy’ in the novel and in the French state’s arguably neo-imperialist initiative differ tellingly. Houellebecq’s novel brings into cautionary focus how responding to perceived geopolitical imperatives by creating narratives of cultural heritage can instead eradicate the conditions of renewal upon which it depends and limit cultural diversity. The instrumentalisation of food heritage by a global corporation, national government and UNESCO—an ostensibly benign supranational institution—risks creating new conditions of global competition. However, comparing the novel and the narratives surrounding the repas gastronomique des Français nonetheless suggests that representations of food—like language—can exceed authorial intention, and the gastronomic miscegenation that is strategically missing from Houellebecq’s novel and elided in the ICH bid may yet continue to feed French food heritage.     

Introduction

In November 2004, France carried out one of the biggest evacuation operations of its expatriates since the Algerian War of 1954–1962. Within a couple of days, more than 8000 French citizens were forced to leave Côte d'Ivoire because of violent anti-French protests by the supporters of the Ivorian regime. This article examines the dispute between French repatriates from Côte d'Ivoire and the French government by analysing the arguments put forward by both sides in legal texts and semi-structured interviews conducted in France and Côte d'Ivoire. It is argued that the dispute cannot be explained satisfactorily as a mere instrumentalisation of the current debates in France about Françafrique. On the contrary, the article shows that Françafrique should be understood primarily as an ideological discourse that organises Franco-African relations and makes them resilient to change.     

From Senegal to Augsburg: Gum Arabic and the Central European Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century

West Africa’s role in the early modern economy is usually reduced to that of a supplier of forced labour for American plantations while other types of trade — especially direct trade between Western Africa and Europe — are often marginalised in scholarship. This article argues that the West African substance gum arabic played a vital role in the large-scale production of printed cottons and linens in Europe — one of the major areas of popular consumption at the time. Its unique qualities and the fact that it was available in large quantities made gum arabic from Senegal and Mauritania indispensable in producing high-quality prints in large numbers for a reasonable price. The article advances this argument by looking at Central instead of Western Europe, in order to illustrate how pervasive this substance was in the eighteenth century. Even regions far removed from the Atlantic — such as the South German city of Augsburg, in today’s Bavaria — needed to find a way to access this Senegambian product in order to produce their popular textiles. The article thus seeks to contribute to a better understanding of Africa’s role in the development of European textile industries and its contribution to consumption patterns by following a specific material from Western Africa to Central Europe — from Senegal to Augsburg.     

Illusions of revolution: François Furet's critique of Marx

In this article it will be argued that François Furet's attempt in Interpreting the French Revolution to provide a conceptual history of the French Revolution through a synthesis of Tocqueville and Cochin's historical and sociological accounts fails methodologically. It does so in two ways: Firstly, in its aim to distinguish between conceptual, explanatory history and empirical, narrative history, and secondly, in its distinction between revolution as process and revolution as act. Drawing on Claude Lefort and Paul Ricoeur's interventions in the historiographical debate, I demonstrate that these seemingly methodological concerns, conceal a deeper historical and political question concerning the nature of the ‘event’ of revolution. In response to Furet's oblique turn to Hegel in his later work, this article traces the nature of the ‘conceptual inversion’ Furet claims to find in Hegel and Marx's accounts of the French Revolution. In relation to Marx, it is argued that Furet's critique fails to capture the allegorical nature of the political in Marx's thought, and underplays the significance of revolution as the basis for both the separation of the social and the political and their attempted unity. The article ends with some remarks on the importance of language and culture in rethinking the relationship between Hegel and Marx.     

A critical assessment of the Hawke government's 1985 code of conduct for Australian companies with interests in the republic of South Africa

Like other Australian governments in the contemporary period the Hawke government sought to enhance its international standing by condemning apartheid. Failing to implement effective policy to match the strong criticism exposed the rhetorical character of the government's South Africa policy. Repeatedly the Hawke government found itself defending a policy framework, which in opposition it had denounced. In essence Australia's South Africa policy had displayed little principle. Refusing to play sport while maintaining bilateral trade and investment with South Africa, underscored the contradictory basis of Australia's South Africa policy. In an effort to redress this policy imbalance the Hawke government chose to enact an employment code for Australian employers of black South African labour. The government promoted this element of policy as a substantial advance in reformulating its overall policy approach. Archival documents and material released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal a very different image.     

Nobility and modern monarchy—J.H.G. Justi and the French debate on commercial nobility at the beginning of the seven years war

This article seeks to explore the European debate on commercial nobility at the beginning of the Seven Years War in the light of the intense reform debates over French absolutism in the 1730s and 1740s and Montesquieu's rigid refutation of noble trade in The Spirit of the Laws (1748). In early 1756, Montesquieu's position against noble trade had come under severe attack by Gabriel François Coyer's Noblesse Commerçante. Claiming that the royal absolutist system had transformed the nobles into an idle class without any political, economic, or military function that stood in sharp contrast to the dynamism of modern commercial society, Coyer perceived noble enterprises in maritime, wholesale, and even retail trade as a necessary means to help France compete with commercially more advanced states such as England and Holland. Coyer's pamphlet roused heated controversies in Paris and beyond and soon engaged the leading minds of the time in debates over the actual and desired role of the hereditary aristocracy in monarchies. Coyer's strongest opponents, like the Chevalier d’Arc, vehemently defended Montesquieu's contention that the upkeep of the non-commercial status of the nobility was a political necessity. Yet they, too, conceded that the nobility had to undergo severe reforms not to hamper France's military standing and future economic success. The article finally turns to Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi, the most interesting commentator on the debate in Germany, who, by October 1756, had translated Coyer's and d’Arc's texts into German and written an own treatise on the same issue. Justi's pamphlet reveals that his political theory was deeply shaped by the debate and thus disproves the long-held assumption in the literature that German cameralism, with Justi as its main representative, was an allegedly isolated current of thought that neither received significant external influences, nor exerted any considerable impact beyond the boundaries of the Germanic world.     

François bauduin's de institutione historie (1561): A primary text behind anders s⊘rensen vedel's de scribenda historia danica (1578)

Although acknowledged as well‐read in contemporary humanist literature, the Danish historian Anders S?rensen Vedel (1542–1616) has never been shown to draw inspiration from any one particular international author of the 16th century (apart from the general influence of Melanchthon and his school). Now, it turns out that the French jurist and pioneer of historical theory, François Bauduin (1520–73), was used extensively by Vedel in one of his early treatises. This leads to a reassessment of Bauduin's intellectual influence around the turn of the century—his theory of history had not yet receded out of sight.     

Gabriel Hanotaux and French Grand Strategy, 1894–8

This article seeks to reappraise the strategic vision of Gabriel Hanotaux, the French Foreign Minister from 1894 to 1898. Most of the scholarship on Hanotaux has focused on his African policies, since shortly after he left office French and British forces engaged in a standoff at Fashoda on the Nile, marking the nadir of pre-war Franco-British relations. This article moves beyond Africa and argues that Hanotaux's foreign policy had a global dimension, particularly apparent in China, and that this is essential to understanding French grand strategy in the period. At the same time, though, Hanotaux's main focus remained European. His interest in the wider world was meant to serve European ends, not least in enabling him to manage the Franco-Russian alliance, France's most important pre-war diplomatic alignment. Hanotaux's political position, though, was weak, and this inhibited the execution of his grand strategy. Moreover, the constraints under which he operated facilitated the continuities that existed between his policy and that of his generally more esteemed successor, Théophile Delcassé.     

Policy Change and Policy Stasis: Comparing Swiss Foreign Policy toward South Africa (1968–94) and Iraq (1990–91)

This article investigates how concepts from the field of public policy, in particular the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) initially introduced by Sabatier and Jenkins‐Smith, can be applied to the study of foreign policy analysis. Using a most similar comparative case studies design, we examine Switzerland's foreign policy toward South Africa under apartheid for the period from 1968 to 1994 and compare it with the Swiss position toward Iraq after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, when the Swiss government imposed—for the first time—comprehensive economic sanctions against another state. The application of the ACF shows that a dominant advocacy coalition in Swiss foreign policy toward South Africa prevented a major policy change in Swiss–South African relations despite external pressure from the international and national political levels. Actually, quite the opposite could be observed: Swiss foreign policy increased its persistence in not taking economic sanctions against the racist regime in South Africa during the 1980s and early 1990s. The ACF, with its analytical focus on policy subsystems and the role of external shocks as potential triggers for change, provided a useful framework for analyzing the factors for policy change and stasis in Swiss foreign relations toward the selected two countries.     

THEMATIC REVIEWS

Clare Midgley, Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780-1870 Moira Ferguson (ed.) The Hart Sisters: Early African Caribbean Writers, Evangelicals, and Radicals Moira Ferguson, Colonialism and Gender from Mary Wollstonecraft to Jamaica Kincaid: East Caribbean Connections Doris Y. Kadish and Françoise Massardier-Kenney (eds) Translating Slavery: Gender and Race in French Women's Writing, 1783-1823 Michael Moon and Cathy N. Davidson (eds) Subjects and Citizens: Nation, Race, and Gender from Oroonoko to Anita Hill     

Balancing the Constitution: Bicameralism in Post-revolutionary France, 1814–31

After the defeat of Napoleon, representative institutions were introduced in many European states. In France, as in other countries, this new institution was modelled on the English example: a bicameral legislature with an elective and a hereditary chamber. However, the Chamber of Peers failed to live up to its model: it soon became clear that it did not behave as an independent, aristocratic chamber capable of holding the balance between the king and the popular Chamber. Restoration liberals concluded on the basis of this failure that the English political model was simply unsuitable for a levelled society such as that in post-revolutionary France. In 1831, the hereditary Chamber of Peers was abolished. The experience of the French with the Chamber of Peers therefore seems to confirm the idea of a French ‘Sonderweg’ developed by historians such as François Furet and Pierre Rosanvallon. However, it should be noted that even after 1831 the idea of a balance as such did not disappear from French political culture. French publicists suggested that the balanced constitution of the English could be imitated in France in different ways, without necessitating the creation of an aristocratic institution. Thus, the example of the French Chamber of Peers shows that institutional transfers had an important impact on French political culture.

résumé: Après la défaite de Napoléon, des institutions représentatives furent introduites dans beaucoup d'états européens. En France comme dans d'autres pays, la nouvelle institution fut modelée sur le modèle britannique du bicaméralisme avec une chambre élue et une chambre héréditaire. Cependant la chambre des pairs ne réussit pas à imiter son modèle. Il devint rapidement évident qu'elle ne représentait pas une aristocratie indépendante capable de servir de lien entre la chambre et le roi. Les libéraux de la restauration conclurent de cet échec que le modèle britannique ne correspondait pas à une société nivelée comme la France post-révolutionnaire. En 1831 la chambre des pairs hereditaire fut abolie. Cette expérience de la chambre des pairs semble confirmer l'idée d'une exception française telle que François Furet et Pierre Rosanvallon la décrive. Cependant l'idée ne disparut pas et cette notion d'équilibre resta dans le discours politique français. Les publicistes Français suggérèrent qu'une constitution équilibrée puisse être imitée sans une institution aristocratique. Cet exemple montre à quel point les transferts institutionnels eurent un impact dans la culture politique française.     

Two decades later: understanding the French response to the Rwandan genocide

Two decades later, the Rwandan genocide has been broadly analysed and, to a certain extent, so has the French response to the genocide. Nevertheless, even though the literature covers extensively how the French executive responded to the genocide, it remains confusing when it comes to explaining why it responded in such a controversial way, since two—somewhat contradictory—accounts have been put forward. In order to address this lack of clarity, the article analyses these main accounts and concludes that they both present key weaknesses that prevent us from fully understanding France’s controversial response. Building on Prunier’s testimony, this article suggests a third explanation by arguing that the ‘Fashoda syndrome’ had a strong influence on President Mitterrand and should be taken into account more consistently, not only when studying the French response in Rwanda, but also Mitterrand’s foreign policy in Africa more generally.     

Australian-African relations 2002: Another look

Various recent developments and events in Africa, including the involvement in 2002 of the Prime Minister of Australia in Commonwealth initiatives in relation to Zimbabwe, have made it timely to review the nature and extent of Australia's relations with African countries. This commentary describes current Australian policies on Africa, including trade relations and aid programs, against the background of the political and economic situation in Africa in the new millennium. In conclusion, the comment is made that Australia's dealings with African countries might have more significance to its own interests than is generally acknowledged. This is so particularly in respect of common standpoints on multilateral trade issues, and the future of the British Commonwealth.     

Crusade or cooperation? Savary de Brèves’s treatises on the Ottoman Empire

This article examines two treatises by François Savary de Brèves, French ambassador to Constantinople (1589-1605) and to the Holy See (1608-14), one promoting a crusade against the Ottoman Empire and the other championing the Franco-Ottoman alliance. By closely reading these ostensibly paradoxical texts, which were published in the same volume, I argue that de Brèves’s true intent was to advocate cooperation between France and the Ottoman Empire as a long-term foreign policy objective. This article draws attention to the significant roles played in the political, diplomatic and intellectual worlds of early-seventeenth-century France by Savary de Brèves, a largely forgotten figure. It highlights the ambivalent image of the Ottomans in early modern Europe and contributes to recent scholarship on the interactions between the Islamic East and Christian West.     

European Union External Trade Policy: Multilevel Principal–Agent Relationships

This article examines the potential political influences on European Union (EU) external trade policymaking. Given the EU's volume of international trade and its extensive involvement in bilateral and multilateral trade arrangements, a better understanding of how the EU makes external trade policy is increasingly important. It is an extremely complex process—involving the EU public, the 25 member states' parliaments and governments, and the institutions of the EU, including the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, and the European Commission. It is a system of multilevel governance with overlapping jurisdictions with numerous potential access points for societal interests to influence European external trade policy. In this article, we evaluate the probable political channels that societal interests could use to influence EU external trade policy. We employ the principal–agent (P–A) framework to examine five of the more important P–A relationships that are likely to influence EU external trade policymaking. We conclude that EU policymaking as it pertains to external trade is quite insulated from general public pressures. The primary institutions involved in external trade policymaking are the EU Council of Ministers and the Commission—both of which are largely insulated from the public. Future empirical work should focus on this relationship between the Council of Ministers and the Commission.