Studies in Military and Strategic History William Philpott(General editor), Professor of Diplomatic History, King’s College London Published titles include: Martin Alexander and William Philpott (editors) ANGLO-FRENCH DEFENCE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE WARS Christopher M. Bell THE ROYAL NAVY, SEAPOWER AND STRATEGY BETWEEN THE WARS Peter Bell CHAMBERLAIN, GERMANY AND JAPAN, 1933–34 Antony Best BRITISH INTELLIGENCE AND THE JAPANESE CHALLENGE IN ASIA, 1914–41 Antoine Capet (editor) BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE ENTENTE CORDIALE SINCE 1904 Philippe Chassaigne and Michael Dockrill (editors) ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS, 1898–1998 From Fashoda to Jospin Michael Dockrill BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT PERSPECTIVES IN FRANCE, 1936–40 Michael Dockrill and John Fisher THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE, 1919 Peace without Victory? John P. S. Gearson HAROLD MACMILLAN AND THE BERLIN WALL CRISIS, 1958–62 John Gooch ARMY, STATE AND SOCIETY IN ITALY, 1870–1915 G. A. H. Gordon BRITISH SEA POWER AND PROCUREMENT BETWEEN THE WARS A Reappraisal of Rearmament Raffi Gregorian THE BRITISH ARMY, THE GURKHAS AND COLD WAR STRATEGY IN THE FAR EAST, 1947–1954 Stephen Hartley THE IRISH QUESTION AS A PROBLEM IN BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY, 1914–18 Ashley Jackson WAR AND EMPIRE IN MAURITIUS AND THE INDIAN OCEAN James Levy THE ROYAL NAVY’S HOME FLEET IN WORLD WAR II Stewart Lone JAPAN’S FIRST MODERN WAR Army and Society in the Conflict with China, 1894–95 Thomas R. Mockaitis BRITISH COUNTERINSURGENCY, 1919–60 Bob Moore and Kent Fedorowich THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND ITS ITALIAN PRISONERS OF WAR, 1940–47 T. R. Moreman THE ARMY IN INDIA AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF FRONTIER WARFARE, 1849–1947 Kendrick Oliver KENNEDY, MACMILLAN AND THE NUCLEAR TEST-BAN DEBATE, 1961–63 Paul Orders BRITAIN, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE UNITED STATES, 1934–46 A Study in International History Elspeth Y. O’Riordan BRITAIN AND THE RUHR CRISIS G. D. Sheffield LEADERSHIP IN THE TRENCHES Officer–Man Relations, Morale and Discipline in the British Army in the Era of the First World War Adrian Smith MICK MANNOCK, FIGHTER PILOT Myth, Life and Politics Martin Thomas THE FRENCH NORTH AFRICAN CRISIS Colonial Breakdown and Anglo-French Relations, 1945–62 Simon Trew BRITAIN, MIHAILOVIC AND THE CHETNIKS, 1941–42 Steven Weiss ALLIES IN CONFLICT Anglo-American Strategic Negotiations, 1938–44 Studies in Military and Strategic History Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-333-71046-3 Hardback 978-0-333-80349-3 Paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Britain, France and the Entente Cordiale since 1904 Edited by Antoine Capet Professor of British Studies, University of Rouen, France Editorial matter,selection and Introduction © Antoine Capet 2006. All remaining chapters © their respective authors 2006. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-0-230-00902-8 All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988,or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,90 Tottenham Court Road,London W1T 4LP. 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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Britain,France,and the Entente Cordiale since 1904/edited by Antoine Capet. p.cm.-- (Studies in military and strategic history) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1.Great Britain–foreign relations–France.2.France–Foreign relations–Great Britain.3.Great Britain–Foreign relations–20th century.4.France–Foreign relations–20th century.I.Capet,Antoine.II.Series:Studies in military and strategic history (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm)) DA47.1.B752006 327.41044--dc22 2006043616 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 Contents Notes on Contributors viii Introduction: ‘Britain’s most enduring Special Relationship’ 1 Antoine Capet 1 ‘French people have a peculiar facility for being misrepresented’: British Perceptions of France at War, 1914–18 8 John Ramsden 2 Lloyd George and Clemenceau: Prima Donnas in Partnership 28 Kenneth O. Morgan 3 Behind the Façade of the Entente Cordialeafter the Great War 41 Robert Boyce 4 Entente and Argument: Britain, France and Disarmament, 1899–1934 64 Andrew Webster 5 British Communists and Anglo-French Relations, 1914–45 78 Andrew Thorpe 6 Churchill and de Gaulle: Makers and Writers of History 105 David Reynolds 7 The Singularity of Suez in Post-War Anglo-French Relations:Une Entente mal entendue 124 Peter Catterall 8 De Gaulle and Anglo-French Mésentente, 1958–67 143 James Ellison v vi Contents 9 Franco-British Relations during the Wilson Years, 1964–70 162 John W. Young 10 From Heath to Thatcher, 1970–90 184 John Campbell 11 A Complex Alliance: The Explosive Chemistry of Franco-British Relations in the Post-Cold War World 198 Klaus W. Larres Index 219 Notes on Contributors Robert Boyce teaches international history at the London School of Economics. He has published several books including British Capitalism at the Crossroads, 1919–1932: A Study in Politics, Economics and International Relations (1987), (editor and translator), French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918–1940: The Decline and Fall of a Great Power (1998), (edited with Joseph Maiolo), The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues (2003), and some forty articles on aspects of twentieth-century international economic and political history. His new book, The Dual Crisis: The Collapse of the International Economic and Political Systems between the Two World Wars, and the Origins of Our Time, will be published soon. John Campbellis a freelance political historian and biographer. His books include Edward Heath, which won the 1994 NCR Award for Non-Fiction, and two volumes on Margaret Thatcher, The Grocer’s Daughter (2000) and The Iron Lady (2003). His latest, If Love Were All ...: The Story of Frances Stevenson and David Lloyd George, will be pub- lished in 2006. Antoine Capet, FRHistS, is Professor of British Studies at the University of Rouen (France). His Doctorat d’État, on Le poids des années de guerre: Les classes dirigeantes britanniques et la réforme sociale, 1931–1951, was published in book form in 1991. He is currently ‘Britain since 1914’ Section Editor of the Royal Historical Society Bibliography and sits on the Editorial Committees of Cultural and Social History and Twentieth Century British History. As head of the CERCLA research group at Rouen, he has organised many confer- ences with invited British scholars, notably one on Anglo-French relations in 2004, from which this book is largely derived. Peter Catterall teaches history and public policy both at the Hansard Society and at Queen Mary, University of London, and European Studies at Cass Business School. He has published extensive- ly on twentieth-century British history, including the award-winning vii viii Notes on Contributors British History 1945–1987: An Annotated Bibliography (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). The founder editor of National Identities, he also edit- edContemporary British Historyfrom 1991 to 2003. Currently he is edit- ing for publication the diaries of Harold Macmillan, the first volume of which appeared in 2003. James Ellison is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary History at Queen Mary, University of London. He is a specialist on Anglo-American and Anglo-European relations after 1945 and has a specific interest in the history of the Cold War and European inte- gration. Anglo-French relations are a particular theme in his research as can be seen in his first book, Threatening Europe: Britain and the Creation of the European Community, 1955–58 (London: Macmillan, 2000). They are also an important feature of his next book on Anglo-American relations and the Gaullist challenge of the 1960s. Klaus Larres is Professor of History and International Affairs and Director of Research at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. He is also a Distinguished Scholar at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, where he previously held the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations. He has published widely on transatlantic relations, including Churchill’s Cold War: The Politics of Personal Diplomacy (Yale University Press, 2002). He currently works on a study of European-American relations from the Cold War to the post-Cold War world and is completing a book on Germany since World War II (Oxford University Press, 2008). Kenneth O. Morgan was Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford, 1966–89, Vice-Chancellor in the University of Wales, 1989–95, and since 2000 has been a Labour member of the House of Lords as Lord Morgan of Aberdyfi. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1983. His twenty-five books on British and Welsh history include six on Lloyd George. He has lectured widely in France and is attached to the University of Rouen research school. His new biography of Michael Foot for Harper Collins will be published shortly. Notes on Contributors ix John Ramsden is Professor of Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London. He has contributed all three twentieth-centu- ry volumes to the Longman History of the British Conservative Party, and published in 2001 a single-volume history of the Party, An Appetite for Power. In 2003 he produced Man of the Century: Winston Churchill and his Legend since 1945, a book on The Dam Bustersfilm of 1955, and (as General Editor) the Oxford Companion to 20th-Century British Politics. His study of British views of twentieth-century Germany, Don’t Mention the War, appeared in May 2006. David Reynoldsis Professor of International History at Cambridge University and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author or editor of ten books including Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the Twentieth Century (1991), The Origins of the Cold War in Europe (editor, 1994), and In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War(2004), which was awarded the Wolfson History Prize. Andrew Thorpe is Professor of Modern British History at the University of Exeter, UK. His publications include The British General Election of 1931 (Clarendon Press, 1991), Britain in the 1930s (Blackwell, 1992), A History of the British Labour Party(1997; 2nd edn, Palgrave, 2001), and The British Communist Party and Moscow, 1920–1943(Manchester University Press, 2000). He is currently com- pleting a monograph on party organisation in Second World War Britain for Oxford University Press. Andrew Webster is the European Union Centre Lecturer in Modern European History at Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia. His Ph.D. dissertation at Cambridge University was on ‘Anglo-French relations and the problems of disarmament and secu- rity, 1929–1933’ (2001). He has published several articles on Anglo- French relations and the disarmament process between the world wars, and is presently writing a history of international disarmament between 1899 and 1945. John W. Young holds the Chair of International History at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Britain, France and the