Arbitrage, securite, desarmement: French security and the League of Nations, 1920-1925

My dissertation explores the French quest for security after World War I by examining French policy towards the League of Nations from 1920 to 1925. My dissertation, based on largely overlooked French archival sources, points out that the League of Nations played an increasingly important role in French security policy from 1920 to 1925, culminating in the drafting of the Geneva Protocol at the League's Fifth Assembly in 1924.; The evolution of French policy can be divided into three general phases. In the first period, from 1920 to 1922, generally conservative French governments viewed the League as having only marginal security value. The French attitude towards the League in the second period, from early 1923 to mid-1924, was dominated by the Ruhr occupation and the overall reparations debate. While the League did become increasingly important in French foreign policy considerations, it was as a negative factor, since Poincare viewed it as a forum where the French occupation of the Ruhr could be challenged. French League policy in the third period, from mid-1924 to early 1925, reversed this attitude. The victory of the leftist Cartel des Gauches in the May, 1924 Parliamentary elections, due in part to its support of the League, marked the most active phase of French League policy. Cartel support for the Geneva Protocol, which incorporated arbitration agreements, disarmament promises, and traditional security treaties, was an attempt to construct an international system of mutual assistance that would also satisfy French security fears vis-a-vis Germany.; The Protocol can be seen as the final attempt to institutionalize Anglo-French cooperation against Germany, and the rejection of the Protocol in 1925 marked the end of France's hope that the organization could function as some sort of security umbrella for an Anglo-French dominated peace. The failure of the Protocol also led directly to the Locarno Accords, a substitute for the more concrete security commitment that France had sought from Britain. After 1925, the League's institutional weakness would be matched by France's increasingly subordinate role to Great Britain.