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This paper is an investigation into a triple homicide in the French Mandate of Syria in 1925. It first suggests that the official decision to single out the murder of three French land registry employees in the midst of the Great Syrian Revolt, a two-year war against French imperial rule, is revealing of the Mandate's attempts to legitimize its dominion over Syria. It then argues that the capacity in which the three slain agents operated, as employees tasked with the break-up of mushâ' properties, is central to their demise. Indeed the Mandate advertised the individualization of mushâ' holdings (based on a rotation of land use rights) as a rational measure meant to improve living standards in rural Syria. But Syrian rebels also perceived such interventions as an attempt by French authorities to circumvent the Mandate-imposed restrictions to their authority through the construction of what is here called 'material sovereignty.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

French policy towards Israel in the 1950s and 1960s depended on a number of variables. Above all, French diplomacy never considered Israel apart from broader Middle Eastern and international considerations. The collusion of the Sinai Campaign of 1956 transformed this situation only to a certain extent; parallel evaluation of the merits and limits of Franco-Israeli relations predated the establishment of the French Fifth Republic. A process of readjustment undertaken by de Gaulle's administration came to the fore in 1960. It combined elements of practical assistance with reserved association in public. The nature of transition defied simple classification. While Israel was concerned about allegedly waning support, the official French narrative denied the existence of a major shift in the substance of bilateral ties. In a way, each party misinterpreted the actions of the other: for Israel, ongoing French assistance did not fully outweigh the decline in overt expressions of 'friendship'; viewed from Paris, the reactions to every minor French 'no' seemed exaggerated. The limitations accompanying bilateral trade confirmed these diverging perspectives even further. Yet, seen in its proper historical context, the outcome of this process was not set in stone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1559 and 1589, Catherine de Médicis developed an acute understanding of the role of the arts in expressing power and political influence. This article argues that the celebrations organized for the meeting of the French and Spanish courts at Bayonne in 1565 demonstrate Catherine's keen understanding of the power of visual culture, and skill at manipulating images in the service of diplomacy. As de facto ruler of France, she reinterpreted popular forms of entertainments and developed new imagery that promoted herself and her son, King Charles IX, as well as asserted her own political legitimacy and that of the ruling Valois dynasty. The fetes at Bayonne were essential in defining Catherine's role as one of Europe's most influential art patrons. The new forms of entertainments devised on the occasion, and their sophisticated visual propaganda, would become characteristic of both a true French Renaissance and a nascent baroque culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since their creation in the 1880s, holiday camps ('colonies de vacances') in France have experienced continued and increasing success. Organised for the most part by local associations or municipalities, they are structured and grouped into federations. A fact specific to France is that the French government took an active role in holiday camps from 1936 onwards. Contributing at first to the democratisation of leisure activities, they went on to become a real public education service after the Second World War, the State then setting up an effective subsidy and inspection system with respect to these camps. Within this context, holiday camps were also considered as important relays of France's foreign and colonial policy, due to their profound symbolic significance. Indeed, they portrayed a picture of a maternal France concerned with the well-being of its children and with national and international solidarity. Between 1945 and the mid-1950s, French holiday camps were then used to serve political and diplomatic agendas. Drawing on ministerial and audiovisual archives, this paper shows, in particular, that holiday camps were promoted abroad in order to further France's international influence, and were widely used to serve the policy established in French Algeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the perception of General Charles de Gaulle in the editorial pages of The Globe and Mail, from his return to politics in 1958 until his resignation in 1969. This exercise makes it possible to place the newspaper's reaction to the French President's famous call "Vive le Québec libre!" from the balcony of Montreal City Hall on July 24, 1967 in a broader context. The Globe and Mail took a great deal of interest in France's foreign policy, and the portrait of the French President as depicted in its editorial pages is most often informed and balanced. Three international situations are examined: the war in Algeria, Great Britain's attempts to join the European Common Market, and France's critical positions in terms of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and then its withdrawal from the organization. The analysis of this perception says a great deal about the newspaper itself and allows us to partially define the Canadian political imagination in the 1960s. We discover that rhetoric and decolonization were very present, as was Canada's past as a self-governing colony of the British Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

France's Mediterranean policy can be analyzed from a historical perspective and through the actual conjuncture related to its geopolitical and geo-cultural elements, such as the West-East civilization dilemma and colonization background. Although these two elements are complementary to each other, they intersect with the political and economic interests of the Turkish state in the region. France's policy has become intertwined with its involvement in the Eastern Mediterranean dispute against Turkey as a result of the natural gas discovery in recent years in the region. France's identification of Turkey as an 'external enemy' reflects the former's political and economic concerns in regard to the Mediterranean gas reserves. Therefore, the envisaged French leadership in the region insists that the EU adopt an exclusionary political approach toward Turkey with the political and diplomatic support of France for Greece and Cyprus. The existing regional problems, however, need to be resolved on the basis of equity, not by ignoring the rights of the parties, but by integrating them. This is necessary for the peaceful resolution of these concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the bitter diplomatic sequence arising in the fall of 2019 between France and the Sahelian countries where France has been conducting military operations since 2013. Far from being just one more hiccup in the troubled relations between France and its former colonies, the article interprets this sequence as a constitutive effect of French protracted military presence in the Sahel. Specifically, it argues that although France has a rather clear security-driven agenda, its operational moves produced by bureaucratic thinking are questioned by influential sections of Sahelian public opinions who frame the French military presence as a deeply political issue over their country's sovereignty. In addition, being the de facto military guarantor of the security of Sahelian regimes, France constrains the domestic political conversation through the 'red lines' it imposes on actors. This externally-induced distortion of the domestic political landscape eventually places Sahelian authorities in front of a dilemma. Pleasing their foreign patrons might cost them the support of the section of public opinion most attached to national sovereignty, and expose them to nationalist entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the 1980s/90s, Brazilian foreign policy adopted a more assertive agenda regarding neighboring countries in northern South America. In this context, the celebration of the Framework Agreement between Brazil and France is inserted, an institutional framework that implemented cross-border cooperation between Amapá and French Guiana. At the time, France was interested in projecting itself politically and commercially in South America. On the other hand, Brazil has also achieved success with this new agenda. However, after twenty-four years in force, cross-border cooperation does not show effectiveness regarding the results expected by the collectives on both sides of the Guiana-Amapá border. This article seeks to discuss that the lack of local participation has become a contender in the development of this cooperation, which has not resulted in a political project capable of promoting the aggregation of cultural matrices that stimulate an identity of objectives. To development the reflection, non-participant observation, interviews with residents in the city of Oiapoque were used, as well as the examination of some agreements concluded between Brazil and France and the minutes of the meetings of the Joint Cross- Border Commission-CTM. The specificities that make the Guiana-Amapá border interesting to the governments of Brazil and France are found in the temporal experiences of multiple actors, unrelated to chronologies, but rather to the length of life lived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on historical encounters between Thailand and France which known as crypto-colonialism and independence marks a symbolic as well as material dependence on intrusive colonial power. It mentions complex ways in which clothing has expressed Thai cryptocolonialism and it considers how the sartorial has served as a material marker of a transformation. It also mentions Siamese monarchy sought to modernize and protect its own interests in the face of European expansionism.

Diverging French and Portuguese approaches to imperialism complicated French diplomats' assessment of Portugal in the 1960s. As France relinquished the last of its African empire, Portugal fought to maintain its overseas provinces. Examining this relationship reveals the uneven evolution of French attitudes towards Africa. Within the French state, some opposed Portugal's bloody colonial wars, while others believed that Portugal, as the remaining European power in Africa, represented the last best hope for the civilising mission on the continent. Beyond the Cold War dynamics at play, ideologies of race and empire lay at the heart of this relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than any other belligerent power, France relied heavily on the contribution of her colonies during the First World War. Thus, the triumph over the Central Powers and the culture(s) of victory which emerged from it were undeniably 'imperial'. But what did this mean for the postwar Empire? This article explores the extent to which victory was a disruptive force in France's Empire. It examines how actors of all ideological, social and ethnic backgrounds from across France's colonies articulated their own visions of how victory in the First World War should shape the future of the Empire. It considers their attempts to place the war into their broader narratives of the Empire, past, present and future and thus impose their own ideas of what a just postwar imperial order should look like. Drawing on examples from across the Empire, it underlines the extent to which victory in the First World War gave rise to competing and often opposing demands for a new settlement among colonial administrators, colonial citizens and colonial subjects. In doing so, it teases out the contradictory role played by imperial cultures of victory in simultaneously facilitating contestation of the colonial system and limiting the radicalism of such challenges to Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nüzhet Sabit was a typical Ottoman intellectual of the Second Constitutional Period(19081918). He distinguished foreign politics from domestics politics, and discussed them separately in his articles. When the Constitution was restored in 1908, the Young Turks intended to establish friendly relations with both France and England. Towards Germany, which had supported Abdülhamid II, on the other hand, they had a more distanced attitude. In time this preference changed, and Germany was once more seen as an ally. The break-out of World War I, however, forced the heads of the Ottoman State to take sides. Eventually, it joined the alliance led by Germany and stayed in this group until the end of the war, which it would conclude in defeat for them. In this article as an opponent intellectual and journalist Nüzhet Sabit's views are explained about the foreign policy of Committee of Union and Progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 50 years after 1960's 'Year of Africa', most of Francophone Africa continues to be embedded in a set of associations that fit very well with Kwame Nkrumah's description of neocolonialism, where postcolonial states are de jure independent but in reality constrained through their economic systems so that policy is directed from outside. This article scrutinises the functioning of the Communauté Financière Africaine (CFA), considering the role the currency has in persistent underdevelopment in most of Francophone Africa. In doing so, the article identifies the CFA as the most blatant example of functioning neocolonialism in Africa today and a critical device that promotes dependency in large parts of the continent. Mainstream analyses of the technical aspects of the CFA have generally focused on the exchange rate and other related matters. However, while important, the real importance of the CFA franc should not be seen as purely economic, but also political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/context: The article examines the traces of documentation of the possible invitation of France to the Amphictyonic Congress of Panama in 1826. This invitation is unknown to most historians due to the scarce documentary evidence. To carry out our inquiry, we consulted the set of available clues: diplomatic correspondence; primary sources; documents from the period; types of diplomatic operations; the identity of the Colombian agent likely to have sent the invitation and the profile of the person supposedly proposed to represent the French government. Originality: Most of the studies available ignore this episode in the relations between France and Latin America during the first years of Independence. Even some of the most influential historians deny its possibility. To our knowledge, this article is the first in systematically analyze the invitation to France while considering a variety of documents and records from Europe and America. Methodology: The research was guided by a historiographical approach, which was based on an exhaustive search of the sources. Conclusions: The article argues that the invitation did indeed take place as an offer, and that the rejection of the French prime minister was motivated by his alliance with the Government of Spain. Likewise, the way the invitation was handled drove the French Government to seek neutrality in the War of Independence. This attitude was indirectly shown by the fact that Franch approached Great Britain to mediate the conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study highlights the main ideas that can be drawn from two notable works that focus on Romania's contemporary history, which saw the light of print at the Parisian publisher L'Harmattan. Yvonne Blondel's Journal de Guerre 1916-1917 (2001) is a genuine historical document, which describes the tribulations of the Romanian Army on the southern front, culminating in the abandonment of Bucharest and the withdrawal to Moldavia, seen through the eyes of a woman who belonged to the French aristocracy and diplomatic service. She brought her contribution in a field hospital that permanently accompanied the Romanian army. In his book, Un géographe français et la Roumanie: Emmanuel de Martonne (1873-1955) (2012) Gavin Bowd skillfully highlights the support brought by the French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne to the knowledge, understanding and support of Romania's claims to territorial unity. Romania and its century-long course (from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth) are described through the eyes of the French geographer and his French and Romanian disciples, with the entire corollary of episodes regarding the moments when the French-Romanian relations tightened or cooled off, the latter being caused by Romania's entry into the Soviet sphere of influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay first explores two contexts that have transformed the way that the international history of the French Revolution has been written over the last thirty years and which have recently provoked so many historians to take a global turn in their research and teaching at the expense of strictly national historiography. First, political relations between France and the Anglo-American world in the 1980s made the older, regnant model of Franco-American sister revolutions, inherited from R. R. Palmer, less plausible; this development sent historians looking for other models that would make the Revolution seem more immediately relevant to students and readers. Second, transformations in the global economy since the 1970s have put globalization on the agenda in a particularly striking manner. These same forces have transformed the economies within academia in ways that have favored teaching and publishing global history. This essay closes with some reflections on the difference between critical and naively enthusiastic approaches to the subject of globalization, and some recommendations on paths for future research on the French Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectuals were fundamental in Latin-American diplomacy. Some of them took part in the diffusion of their own culture. Luis Chico Goerne was one of these, an academic and former rector in charge of a mission in Paris in the end of 1938. He designed, unsuccessfully, a plan based on the two currents of Mexican cultural diplomacy, one of propaganda and one more cultural. The goal is to show how was thought the Mexican cultural diplomacy and how Chico Goerne participated in its renovation. Thanks to the investigation based on French and Mexican diplomatic sources, it was possible to present how Chico Goerne tried to make an advantageous propaganda to the Mexican government, and to create a Mexican institute in Paris, in order to have Mexico better known in France. The interest of this article is to understand how was made the institutionalization of the cultural diplomacy, or how it changed from an individual action to a collective and institutional policy and how it reduced the importance of intellectual action in cultural diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reign of Louis XIV was an exceptional moment for relations between France and the "East," and, at its peak, Versailles hosted the Thai embassy in 1686. The diplomatic gifts that were exchanged competed in variety and luxury, with each sovereign offering what seemed most likely to please the recipient and express the dignity of his office. At the end of the reign of Louis XIV, the nature of contact with the Emperor of China was difficult to define, given the ambiguous role of the Jesuits, who seemingly acted more in their own interests than in those of the Emperor or the King of France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Propaganda was an important factor in Romanian-French relations in 1918. Taking into account Romania's political and military situation in the latter part of the war and immediately after the end of the conflagration, one can identify three stages in the organization of Romanian propaganda and cultural diplomacy in France. A first stage ended in March 1918, when the government headed by Alexandru Marghiloman replaced Victor Antonescu as chief of the Paris legation and decided to cut funding for the Mission of University Professors. The second stage began in March and ended with the appointment of General Constantin Coandă as head of the government in October 1918. In the third stage, which began in October/November 1918, the Romanian leaders' intention was to obtain the status of allied country and to prepare for the Peace Conference. In this new context, the impetus of Romanian propaganda in France was renewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did France influence the geopolitical system of eighteenth-century Europe more effectively than did Britain? Explanations pointing to states’ military and economic power are unable to explain this outcome. I argue that durable geopolitical influence depends on states’ symbolic capacities to secure recognition from competitor states, in addition to their coercive and economic capacities. And I show that states are liable to secure recognition to the extent that their agents embody social dispositions congruent with those of competitor agents. France converted military and economic power into durable influence in eighteenth-century Europe because French agents and most of their European counterparts shared courtly standards of competence, and they were invested in the common stakes of patrimonial sovereignty. By contrast, Britain failed to convert its greater material power into similar influence because British agents tended to lack courtly manners and they were uninterested in patrimonial stakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the attitudes of French government leaders during the reign of Louis XIII, King of France, toward a potential extension of the Twelve Years' Truce. The diplomatic correspondence of Jean de Péricard, Ambassador of France to Brussels (Belgium), is examined. Topics include France-Brussels relations from 1690 to 1619, relations between the French government and Huguenots, and archdukes Albert d'Autriche's and Isabelle Claire Eugénie's interpretation of the French king's diplomatic efforts.

This article focuses on the experience of Pierre David, Napoleonic consul in Bosnia from 1807 to 1814, under Hüsrev Mehemed Pasha's tenure as governor of the province (1806-8). It relies on the diplomatic correspondence between David and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The goal is to highlight the French interests in the area and their modification after the Treaty of Tilsit; the figure of Hüsrev Mehemed Pasha; the relationship of the locals with the Ottoman authority and the Consul; and the local effects of the revolution that overthrew the reformer sultan Selim III. The article reveals the ineffectiveness of communication from the highest to the lowest levels of French diplomacy in the Levant. It also demonstrates the complex Ottoman center-periphery dynamics during one of the empire's most critical moments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the U.S.'s role in the overthrow of the Iranian Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. An overview of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the French government and the U.S. President Jimmy Carter's knowledge of the shah's illness is provided.

The article comparatively analyses Franco-Burundian and Franco-Rwandan relations during the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. From the 1970s, the two former Belgian colonies were integrated into the complex political, economic, cultural and military system that France implemented with its former colonies. By the mid-1980s, Paris achieved a formal co-optation of the two states in the traditional Franco-African order, with more success in Rwanda than in Burundi. Nevertheless, in both cases this co-optation was partial: the interconnections between Paris, Bujumbura and Kigali in 1985 were not as intense and as close as the other traditional Franco-African bonds. The article explores the process of inclusion of the two states in the pré carré africain français. The purpose is to highlight the main features of the relationship between Paris, Bujumbura and Kigali and to evaluate the results achieved by 1985 through an historical and in-depth analysis. The article contributes significantly to existing knowledge on Franco-African relations, and provides a better understanding of the Franco-Burundian and Franco-Rwandan dynamics that emerged in the early 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Vietnam War made May '68 possible. The war prompted young radicals to experiment with new forms of struggle, reinvent radical internationalism and ultimately embrace revolution. Transnational exchanges and a changing political conjuncture pushed some radicals to argue that the best way to aid their Vietnamese comrades abroad was to bring the war home to France. Their efforts to translate the exemplary struggles in Vietnam into a domestic idiom helped trigger the events of May '68. Seen in this transnational context, May '68 was one front among many in a broader, worldwide anti-imperialist struggle, led primarily by the Vietnamese. In France, Vietnam became a universal symbol of revolt, supercharging other struggles, while radicals elsewhere were inspired to translate the French May into their own national contexts. This article shows just how profoundly Vietnam shaped the radical imaginary of the "68 years". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the Lomé Convention (1975) was signed between the European Economic Community (EEC) and 46 African Caribbean and Pacific States, the EEC member states had to deal with the African members of the Commonwealth. Among the Six France was in a peculiar position, wishing to maintain a special relationship between the EEC and the French-speaking African states and to enlarge its relations with other regions of the Third World. This article, based on an examination of the French Foreign Ministry Archives and the Papiers Foccart, aims to investigate the prehistory of the relations between the EEC and the English-speaking African states. It analyses the French role in the debate, outcomes and consequences of the first agreements signed by the European Community with Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. To this aim it will focus on the negotiations between the EEC and the African states, but also on the debate which took place in some international organisations on the Yaoundé Convention, in order to understand to what extent these discussions paved the way for the evolution of the EEC Development Policy during the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the conceptualization and interpretation of ‘European solidarity’ by the French President François Mitterrand. It discusses the relevance of former concepts of foreign and European policy. It differentiates between a European idea and European institutions, also taking into account personal experiences. Finally, it analyses the correlation between different concepts such as ‘European solidarity’, ‘transatlantic solidarity’, ‘West European solidarity’ and ‘pan-European solidarity’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

France’s hesitant stance on EU enlargement towards the Balkans is illustrative of a broader ambivalence among both French elites and citizens towards the European project. Despite principled support for the Balkans’ EU membership, achieving this step is no strategic priority for France. The official approach emphasizes strict conditionality and a rigorous monitoring of reform progress in aspirant countries. A hostile public opinion and superficial media coverage further strengthen the country’s reluctance to admit new, possibly unprepared candidates into the Union. Analysing the historical evolution of the French position on EU enlargement as well as its current political, institutional and societal expressions, this article construes France’s disinvestment from the Balkans’ EU perspective as the result of failed expectations and a growing disillusionment with the EU’s international role and its political future more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In late 1969 five embargoed missile boats were spirited out of the French port of Cherbourg by the Israelis, for whom they were being produced.While the Pompidou government expressed outrage over the Cherbourg affair, as the incident became known, French media and political discourse on the affair were largely approving, paradoxically praising Israeli audacity at the expense of the French government. Examination of understudied media and archival sources indicates that the ideational and discursive underpinnings of the midcentury French-Israeli alliance had survived the official French-Israeli rupture on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War and continued to shape discourse and action into the 1970s. These findings indicate that the impact of 1967 must be understood as a process and not a paradigm- shattering moment in the history of French-Israeli relations and they demonstrate that the erosion of French public and political support for Israel was slow and uneven. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the economic effects of corporatization processes in Africa through an analysis of the intervention of French media companies in the economy of Nigerian video film distribution in Frenchspeaking West Africa, and particularly in Côte d'Ivoire. In a global context that is marked by the price volatility of raw materials such as oil and copper, screen media have been described as the new 'African black gold', attracting the interest of a large number of both African and non-African players and setting in motion a process of the 'corporate takeover' of African screen media industries. Analysing this process can help us to understand wider economic transformations in Africa. This article examines what we might call the 'technopolitics' of Nigerian video films' circulation and their historical transformations by examining the microdimension of the experiences of a number of West African video film producers and distributors, and the macro-dimension of the activities of a French corporation, CanalPlus, which is investing in Nollywood's distribution. It argues that Nollywood has acquired a strategic function for French enterprises that are investing in Africa, as evidenced by the transformation of Côte d'Ivoire's role in the economy of Nigerian video films' transnational circulation. This suggests a new and transformed dimension to France's economic and political relationships with sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a more nuanced assessment of the politics of African neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is devoted to Franco-Lithuanian relations after the proclamation of the independence of Lithuania in 1918 and before the revolt in Memel in 1923. Efforts and contradictions, which emerged in the process of involving Lithuania in the sphere of French interests in the context of the Polish-Lithuanian conflict, and geopolitical confrontations of the states interested in establishing influence and control in the Baltic region are considered and evaluated. Based on the analysis of archival documents, the goals set before the military mission in Lithuania, which were not realized because of the French support for Poland in the Polish-Lithuanian territorial dispute, were identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new Poland is no longer an engine of European integration, nor does it seem to value its relationships with Germany and France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the dispute between the U.S. and France over arms trade in 2003. Absence of the U.S. from the 2003 Paris Air Show; Stand of the French government on the U.S-led war in Iraq; Impact of the French-American competition on transatlantic mergers and acquisitions.