Name Jacques Bainville | Role Journalist | |
 | ||
Died February 9, 1936, Paris, France Albums Saint Charles - Charlemagne (On le fete le 4 novembre) | ||
Jacques Pierre Bainville (February 9, 1879 in Vincennes, Val-de-Marne – February 9, 1936 in Paris) was a French historian and journalist. A geopolitical theorist, pre-occupied by Franco-German relations, he was a leading figure in the monarchist Action Française. His writings displayed his hatred of disorder, of romanticism, liberalism, democracy, internationalism, the French Revolution, and especially, his hatred of Germany.
Contents
L histoire de france jacques bainville
Political career
Bainville is best known for his prophetic criticisms of the Treaty of Versailles in Les Conséquences Politiques de la Paix (The Political Consequences of Peace, 1920). Raymond Aron retrospectively endorsed Bainville's judgment that the "Versailles Treaty was too harsh in its mild features, too mild in its harsh aspects": provoking Germany to seek vengeance without restraining it from doing so. Bainville argued that the treaty's debts bound German states closer to Prussia and weakened neighbors to the South and East (principally Austria-Hungary) that might be willing and able to contain it. By consolidating Germany, he warned that the treaty established an untenable situation whereby "40 million Frenchmen have as debtors 60 million Germans, whose debt cannot be liquidated for 30 years". He castigated Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George for what he perceived as naive moralism that dangerously neglected geopolitical imperatives. Intended as a complement to John Maynard Keynes' critique of the treaty, it was eventually translated into German in Nazi Germany by some, alleging that France had a mission for German destruction.
His other written works included Histoire de France as well as political columns for a number of newspapers and editing La Revue Universelle for Maurras. His Histoire de deux peuples (1915) underlined the importance for France of German weakness and sought a return to the pre-Franco-Prussian War status of Germany. He repeatedly lauded the Treaty of Westphalia as the diplomatic arrangement best suited to securing peace in Europe. Preoccupied by the need to contain Germany, he was initially an admirer of Italian fascism and when early reports came through about violent acts by Benito Mussolini's fascio in 1921, he praised them as proof that Italy was regaining her strength.
A follower of Charles Maurras, Bainville was a founder of Action Française and soon became an important figure in the Institut d'Action Française, a college of sorts ran by the organisation (it had no permanent buildings but ran lectures and study groups where possible). Edward R. Tannenbaum states that by 1900 he had formed his major hatreds: hatred of disorder, of romanticism, liberalism, democracy, internationalism, the French Revolution, and especially hatred of Germany. Bainville first came to prominence as an activist against Alfred Dreyfus. He believed in anti-Semitic conspiracies, but was sceptical of the integrity of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion despite also defending them.
Bainville was appointed to a chair at Académie française in 1935 although he did not hold the position long as he died soon afterwards. A strong Catholic, he was denied the last rites by Cardinal Jean Verdier, as the Pope had condemned Action Française in 1926. Nonetheless, the sacrament, as well as his funeral, were performed by a canon who was sympathetic to the movement. Bainville's funeral proved a further source of controversy when Léon Blum was set upon and nearly lynched by a crowd of mourners during the funeral procession.