Raymond Poincaré

Poincaré during his military service in the 1880s

Born in Bar-le-Duc, Meuse, France, Raymond Poincaré was the son of Nanine Marie Ficatier, who was deeply religious[4] and Nicolas Antonin Hélène Poincaré, a distinguished civil servant and meteorologist. Raymond was also the cousin of Henri Poincaré, the famous mathematician. He later wrote that "In all my years at school I saw no other reason to live than the possibility of recovering our lost provinces."[5] Educated at the University of Paris, Raymond was called to the Paris Bar, and was for some time law editor of the Voltaire. He became at the age of 20 the youngest lawyer in France.[6] and was appointed Secrétaire de la Conférence du Barreau de Paris. As a lawyer, he successfully defended Jules Verne in a libel suit presented against the famous author by the chemist, Eugène Turpin, inventor of the explosive melinite, who claimed that the "mad scientist" character in Verne's book Facing the Flag was based on him.[7] At the age of 26, Poincaré was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, making him the youngest deputy in the chamber.[6]

Poincaré had served for over a year in the Department of Agriculture when in 1887 he was elected deputy for the Meuse département. He made a great reputation in the Chamber as an economist, and sat on the budget commissions of 1890–1891 and 1892. He was minister of education, fine arts and religion in the first cabinet (April – November 1893) of Charles Dupuy, and minister of finance in the second and third (May 1894 – January 1895). In Alexandre Ribot's cabinet, Poincaré became minister of public instruction. Although he was excluded from the Radical cabinet which followed, the revised scheme of death duties proposed by the new ministry was based upon his proposals of the previous year. He became vice-president of the chamber in the autumn of 1895 and, in spite of the bitter hostility of the Radicals, retained his position in 1896 and 1897.[8]

Along with other followers of "Opportunist" Léon Gambetta, Poincaré founded the Democratic Republican Alliance (ARD) in 1902, which became the most important centre-right party under the Third Republic. In 1906, he returned to the ministry of finance in the short-lived Sarrien ministry. Poincaré had retained his practice at the Bar during his political career, and he published several volumes of essays on literary and political subjects.

"Poincarism" was a political movement over the period 1902–1920. In 1902, the term was used by Georges Clemenceau to define a young generation of conservative politicians who had lost the idealism of the founders of the republic. After 1911, the term was used to mean "national renewal" when faced with the German threat. After the First World War, "Poincarism" refers to his support of business and financial interests.[9] Poincaré was noted for his lifelong feud with Georges Clemenceau.[10]

Poincaré became prime minister in January 1912 and systematically rooted out all political opponents and critics from the government, thereby securing total control over French foreign policy as both prime minister and later as president.[11] Foreign policy decisions during his time in cabinet were approved unanimously almost every time.[11] He viewed the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an administrative organ.[12] A Germanophobe, Poincaré ruled out any kind of understanding with Germany.[11] His Germanophobia was based not so much on revanchism but rather on his belief that Germany was too powerful and becoming stronger and the balance of power had to be changed through war in France's favor.[13] Poincaré sought to prevent any reconciliation between Germany and Britain or Russia.[14]

During the Bosnian Crisis of 1908-1909 and the Second Moroccan Crisis in 1911, France and the Russian Empire had failed to support each other.[15] In 1912, Poincaré converted the 1894 Franco-Russian Alliance from a defensive agreement to a tool for offensive war that could be triggered by a dispute in the Balkans.[11] In August 1912, Poincaré visited Tsar Nicholas in Russia to bolster France's military alliance with the Tsarist state.[16][17]

Poincaré hoped to pursue an expansionist policy at the expense of Germany's unofficial ally, the Ottoman Empire.[18] Poincaré was a leading member of the Comité de l'Orient, the main group that advocated French expansionism in the Middle East.[6] The victory of the Balkan League in the First Balkan War was seen by Poincaré as a powerful threat to Austria's flank, strengthening the Triple Entente and weakening the military position of Germany and Austria-Hungary.[19]

Poincaré rejected Joseph Caillaux's proposal for a Franco-German alliance, arguing that Paris would be the junior partner, thus tantamount to ending France's status as a great power.[20] A fiscal conservative, he was deeply concerned about the financial effects of an ever more costly arms race. Being from Lorraine, whether he was a revancharde (revanchist) is disputed.[21] His family house was requisitioned for three years during the war.[4]

Poincaré with President Alexandre Millerand in 1923.

In 1920, Poincaré's term as President came to an end, and two years later he returned to office as Prime Minister. Once again, his tenure was noted for its strong anti-German policies.[40]

Frustrated at Germany's unwillingness to pay reparations, Poincaré hoped for joint Anglo-French economic sanctions against it in 1922, while opposing military action. In April 1922, Poincare was greatly alarmed by the Treaty of Rapallo, the beginning of a German-Soviet challenge to the international order established by the Treaty of Versailles. He was disturbed that British Prime Minister David Lloyd George did not share the French viewpoint, instead almost welcoming Rapallo as a chance to bring Soviet Russia into the international system.[41] Poincaré came to believe by May 1922 that if Rapallo could not convince the British that Germany was out to undercut the Versailles system by whatever means necessary, then nothing would, in which case France would just have to act alone.[42] Further adding to Poincaré's fears was the worldwide propaganda campaign started in April 1922 blaming France for World War I as a means of disproving Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, which would thereby undermine the French claim to reparations.[43]

Poincaré with Painlevé and Briand (1925)

In the German-Soviet propaganda of the 1920s, the July Crisis of 1914 was portrayed as Poincaré-la-guerre (Poincaré's war), in which Poincaré put into action the plans he had allegedly negotiated with Emperor Nicholas II in 1912 for the dismemberment of Germany.[44] The French Communist newspaper L'Humanité ran a front-page cover-story accusing Poincaré and Nicholas II of being the two men who plunged the world into war in 1914.[45] The Poincaré-la-guerre propaganda proved to be very effective in the 1920s.[44]

Throughout the spring and summer of 1922, the British continued to spurn Poincaré's offers of an alliance with Britain.[42][46] Poincaré's attempt to compromise with the British on German reparations failed in 1922.[47] By December 1922 Poincaré was faced with British-American-German hostility and saw coal for French steel production and money for reconstructing the devastated industrial areas draining away.[48]

Poincaré decided to occupy the Ruhr on 11 January 1923, to extract the reparations himself. This, according to historian Sally Marks, "was profitable and caused neither the German hyperinflation, which began in 1922 and ballooned because of German responses to the Ruhr occupation, nor the franc's 1924 collapse, which arose from French financial practices and the evaporation of reparations."[49] The profits, after Ruhr-Rhineland occupation costs, were nearly 900 million gold marks.[50] During the Ruhr crisis, Poincaré made a failed attempt to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.[51][52] Poincaré lost the 1924 French legislative election "more from the franc's collapse and the ensuing taxation than from diplomatic isolation."[53]

Time Cover, 24 Mar 1924

Hines H. Hall argues that Poincaré was not a vindictive nationalist. Despite his disagreements with Britain, he desired to preserve the Anglo-French entente. When he ordered the French occupation of the Ruhr valley in 1923, his aims were moderate. He did not try to revive Rhenish separatism. His major goal was the winning of German compliance with the Versailles treaty. Poincaré's inflexible methods and authoritarian personality led to the failure of his diplomacy.[54]

A 1932 electoral leaflet supporting Raymond Poincaré's achievements

Financial crisis brought him back to power in 1926, and he once again became Prime Minister and Finance Minister until his retirement in 1929. As Prime Minister, he enacted a number of franc stabilization policies, retroactively known as the Poincaré Stabilization Law.[55][56] His popularity as Prime Minister rose considerably following his return to the gold standard, so much so that his party won the April 1928 general election.[57]

As early as 1915, Raymond Poincaré introduced a controversial denaturalization law which was applied to naturalized French citizens with "enemy origins" who had continued to maintain their original nationality. Through another law passed in 1927, the government could denaturalize any new citizen who committed acts contrary to French "national interest".

Due to his ill health, Poincaré resigned as Prime Minister in July 1929, refusing to serve another term as Prime Minister.[57] He died in Paris on 15 October 1934 at the age of 74.

His brother, Lucien Poincaré (1862–1920), a physicist, became inspector-general of public instruction in 1902. He is the author of La Physique moderne (1906) and L'Électricité (1907).

Jules Henri Poincaré (1854–1912), an even more distinguished physicist and mathematician, was his first cousin.

• French entry into World War I
• Interwar France

• Adamthwaite, Anthony (April 1999). "Review of Raymond Poincaré by J. F. V. Keiger". The English Historical Review. 114 (456): 491–492. doi:10.1093/ehr/114.456.491.
• Fromkin, David (2004). Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Herwig, Holger & Richard Hamilton. Decisions for War, 1914-1917 (2004)
• Keiger, J. F. V. (1997). Raymond Poincaré. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-57387-4., review
• Maisel, Ephraim (1994). The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1919-1926. Sussex Academic Press. pp. 122–23.
• Marks, Sally '1918 and After. The Postwar Era', in Gordon Martel (ed.), The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1999)
• McMeekin, Sean (2014). July 1914: Countdown to War. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465060740.
• Mombauer, Annika (2002). The Origins of the First World War. London: Pearson.
• Paddock, Troy R.E. (2019). Contesting the Origins of the First World War: An Historiographical Argument. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781138308251.
• Smith, Leonard; Audoin-Rouzeau, Steéphane; Becker, Annette (2003). France and the Great War, 1914-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Zuber, Terence (2014). "France and the Cause of World War I". Global War Studies. 11 (3): 51–63. doi:10.5893/19498489.11.03.03.

• Bernard, Philippe, Henri Dubief & Thony Forster, The Decline of the Third Republic, 1914–1938, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, oclc: 894680106
• Clark, Christopher, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, New York: Harper Collins, 2012.
• Gooch, G.P. Before the war: studies in diplomacy (2 vol 1936, 1938) online vol 2 pp 137–199.
• Keiger, John F. V. "Raymond Poincaré and the Ruhr crisis." French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918-1940 (Routledge, 2005) pp. 59-80.
• Keiger, John F. V. Raymond Poincaré (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
• Mayeur, Jean-Marie, Madeleine Rebirioux & J. R. Foster, The Third Republic from its Origins to the Great War, 1871-1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988
• Wright, Gordon, Raymond Poincare and the French Presidency, New York: Octagon Books, 1967, oclc: 405223
• Huddleston, Sisley, Poincaré: A Biographical Portrait,, Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1924
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Poincaré, Raymond". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

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