Raymond Poincaré
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Categories: Presidents of France | Prime Ministers of France | French Senators | France and World War I | French people of World War I | French Roman Catholics | Members of the Académie française | Knights of the Golden Fleece | 1854 births | 1934 deaths | People from Lorraine | Rectors of the University of Glasgow
Raymond Poincaré (August 20, 1860 – October 15, 1934) was a French conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of France on five separate occasions and as President of France from 1913 to 1920. Early lifeBorn in Bar-le-Duc, Meuse, France, the son of Nicolas Antonin Hélène Poincaré, a distinguished civil servant and meteorologist. Educated at the University of Paris, Raymond was called to the Paris bar, and was for some time law editor of the Voltaire. 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 himself. (A letter which Verne later sent to his brother Paul seems to suggest that, though acquitted due to Poincaré's spirited defence, Verne did intend to defame Turpin.) Early political careerPoincaré had served for over a year in the Department of Agriculture when in 1887 he was elected deputy for the Meuse. 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. Along with other followers of "Opportunist" Léon Gambetta, Poincaré founded the Democratic Republican Alliance (ARD) in 1902, which became the most important center-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. First premiershipPoincaré became Prime Minister in January of 1912, and began pursuing a hard-line anti-German policy, noted for restoring close ties with France's Russian ally. PresidencyHe was elected President of the Republic in 1913, in succession to Armand Fallières and attempted to make that office into a site of power for the first time since MacMahon in the 1870s. He generally managed to continue to dominate foreign policy, in particular. He became increasingly sidelined after the accession to power of Georges Clemenceau as Prime Minister in 1917. He believed the Armistice happened too soon and that the French Army should have penetrated Germany far more.[1] At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, negotiating the Treaty of Versailles, he wanted France to wrest the Rhineland from Germany to put it under Allied military control.[2] Poincaré wrote a memorandum for the conference, saying that after the Franco-Prussian War Germany occupied various French provinces and did not leave until they received all of the indemnity, whereas France was asking for reparations for damaged caused. He further claimed that if the Allies did not occupy the Rhineland and at a later date found that they would need to do so again, Germany would label them the aggressor:
Ferdinand Foch urged Poincaré to invoke his powers as laid down in the Constitution and take over the negotiations of the treaty due to worries that Clemenceau was not achieving France's aims.[4] He did not and when the French Cabinet approved of the terms Clemenceau got Poincaré thought about resigning, although again he refrained.[5] Second premiershipIn 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, with Poincaré justifying these by saying: "Germany's population was increasing, her industries were intact, she had no factories to reconstruct, she had no flooded mines. Her resources were intact, above and below ground...In fifteen or twenty years Germany would be mistress of Europe. In front of her would be France with a population scarcely increased".[6] Frustrated at Germany's unwillingness to pay reparations, Poincaré hoped for joint Anglo-French economic sanctions against Germany in 1922 and opposed military action. However by December 1922 he was faced with British-American-German hostility and saw coal for French steel production and money for reconstructing the devastated industrial areas draining away. Poincaré was exasperated with British failure to act, and wrote to the French ambassador in London:
Poincaré decided to occupy the Ruhr in 11 January 1923 to extract the reparations herself. This "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".[8] The profits, after Ruhr-Rhineland occupation costs, were nearly 900 million gold marks.[9] Poincaré lost the 1924 parliamentary election "more from the franc's collapse and the ensuing taxation than from diplomatic isolation".[10] Third premiershipFinancial crisis brought him back to power in 1926, and he once again became Prime Minister and Finance Minister until his retirement in 1929. He died in Paris in 1934. FamilyHis brother, Lucien Poincaré (b. 1862), famous as 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 (b. 1854), also a distinguished physicist and mathematician, belonged to another branch of the same family. Poincaré's First Ministry, 21 January 1912 – 21 January 1913
Changes
Poincaré's Second Ministry, 15 January 1922 – 29 March 1924
Changes
Poincaré's Third Ministry, 29 March – 9 June 1924
Poincaré's Fourth Ministry, 23 July 1926 – 11 November 1928
Changes
Poincaré's Fifth Ministry, 11 November 1928 – 29 July 1929
Notes
References Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
ca:Raymond Poincaré cs:Raymond Poincaré da:Raymond Poincaré de:Raymond Poincaré es:Raymond Poincaré fr:Raymond Poincaré ko:레몽 푸앵카레 it:Raymond Poincaré la:Raimundus Poincaré nl:Raymond Poincaré ja:レイモン・ポアンカレ pl:Raymond Poincaré pt:Raymond Poincaré ro:Raymond Poincaré ru:Пуанкаре, Раймон fi:Raymond Poincaré sv:Raymond Poincaré tr:Raymond Poincaré | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
