Jacques Bainville

Jacques Pierre Bainville (February 9, 1879 in Vincennes, Val-de-Marne - February 9, 1936 in Paris) was a French historian and journalist. A staunch monarchist, he was a leading figure in Action Française.

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.^[1] Bainville argued that the Treaty's debts bound German states closer to Prussia, while weakening neighbors to the South and East (principally Austria-Hungary) who 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".^[2] He castigated Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George for naive moralism that dangerously neglected geo-political 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.^[3]

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.^[4] 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, and 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 it as proof that Italy was regaining her strength.^[5]

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).^[6] Bainville first came to prominence as an activist against Alfred Dreyfus.^[7]

Bainville was appointed to a chair at Académie française in 1935, although he did not hold the position long as he died soon afterwards.^[8] 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.^[4] Bainville's funeral proved a further source of controversy when Léon Blum was set upon by a crowd of mourners during the funeral procession.^[9]

Works

References

Further reading

• Keylor, William R. (1979). Jacques Bainville and the Renaissance of Royalist History in Twentieth-century France. Louisiana State University Press.
• Linville, Lyle E. (1971). Jacques Bainville: His Political Life and Thought in the Era of the Great War. Kent State University.
• Schwiesow, Naomi R. (1975). France in Europe: The Political Writings of Jacques Bainville. Johns Hopkins University.
• Tannenbaum, Edward R. (1950). "Jacques Bainville", The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 340–345.
• Thomas, Hilah F. (1962). The Thought of Jacques Bainville on Germany: A Study in the Loyalties of Integral Nationalism. Northampton, Mass.: Smith College.

External links

• Works by Jacques Bainville, at Internet Archive
• Works by Jacques Bainville, at Hathi Trust
• Works by Jacques Bainville, at Unz.org
• Jacques Bainville, 1879-1936