Background
Aristide Briand was born as Aristide Pierre Henri Briand at Nantes, France, on March 28, 1862.
Aristide Briand was born as Aristide Pierre Henri Briand at Nantes, France, on March 28, 1862.
Aristide Briand attended the Nantes Lycée, where, in 1877, he developed a close friendship with Jules Verne. He studied law in Paris, and entered politics as a violent anticlerical and syndicalist.
Aristide Briand's political efforts, first in Brittany, then at Paris, brought him into contact with socialists like RenéRene Viviani and Jean Jaurès;Jaures; with them he set up the Parti Socialiste FrançaisFrancais (French Socialist Party) in opposition to the uncompromisingly Marxist wing of French socialism led by Jules Guesde. In 1904 Briand and his associates founded the newspaper L'Humanité;L'Humanite; it was then a Socialist paper and became a Communist paper 15 years later. Briand supported Dreyfus once the Socialists became active in the Dreyfus Affair.
In 1902 his brilliant defense of an antimilitarist leader, Gustave HervéHerve (who thought the best place for the French flag was on a dunghill), brought Briand nationwide notoriety and election to the Chamber of Deputies. In the Chamber his personality, which combined vulgarity with charm, his abilities, his resonant orator's voice, and his debating talent soon brought him success, which was confirmed by his skillful handling of the law for separation of church and state (1905-1906). Briand's diplomacy and tact in preparing and executing this historic measure gained him the sympathy of many Catholics and the reputation of being a moderate; on this his subsequent career was based.
The years before 1914 saw Briand drift to the right, suppressing the strikes of his former comrades and supporting Raymond Poincaré'sPoincare's new nationalism. From 1914 to 1917 he was first vice-premier, then premier. He pressed for a Balkan front and worked for closer cooperation between the Allies, but accusations of ineffectiveness forced him from office. Briand reemerged in 1921 as the champion of national unity (excluding the Socialists) and of international understanding. To achieve the former, he avoided all attempts to improve obsolete tax structures, which might affect vested interests, and he pleased the Catholics by reestablishing a French Embassy to the Vatican. To serve the latter, he favored negotiations to ensure that the peace terms with Germany were enforced, but not too harshly.
In the League of Nations, and in a series of international conferences, declarations, and treaties (Locarno, October 1925; Thoiry, September 1926; Briand-Kellogg Pact, 1928), the "pilgrim of peace" became the apostle of Franco-German friendship and, eventually, of a European Federal Union. In these efforts he was joined by the German statesman Gustav Stresemann, and they both received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926 for their work.
Briand was occupied with the question of the separation of church and state. He was appointed reporter of the commission charged with the preparation of the 1905 law on separation. He became a freemason in the lodge Le Trait d'Union in July 1887. Briand negotiated the Briand-Ceretti Agreement with the Vatican, giving the French government a role in the appointment of Catholic bishops.
Briand was one of the leaders of the French Socialist Party. In 1902, after several unsuccessful attempts, he was elected deputy. He declared himself a strong partisan of the union of the Left in what was known as the Bloc, in order to check the reactionary Deputies of the Right.