France
Treaty of Versailles Centennial: French Aims in Paris
June 14, 2019What war aims did the French have during World War I and how did they negotiate the treaties that ended this war? In 1917 the Comité d’études was created by Aristide Briand to assist the French Government in formulating these aims. The work of this Comité resulted in an impressive report of around 1500 pages: maps, statistics, tracing the borders of the Alsace, the Saar Region, Lorraine, Luxembourg, Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, etc. At the Paris Peace Conference, the French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, controlled his delegation and his chief goal was to weaken Germany militarily, strategically and economically.
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D-Day and the Battle of Normandy Remembered 2019
June 6, 2019Commemorations of the Allied D-Day landings have begun in Europe, where veterans of the invasion are gathering along with world leaders to mark the 75th anniversary of the operation to liberate France. D-Day started shortly after midnight June 6th, 1944 with an extensive air and naval bombardment and an airborne assault on the French coast. 24.000 British, Canadian and American paratroopers were dropped behind the 80 kilometer wide beach zone and seized key objectives such as bridges and road crossings.
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Initiative pour l’Europe – Discours d’Emmanuel Macron pour une Europe souveraine, unie, démocratique
[Téléchargez la synthèse des propositions en français ou en anglais] [Source: http://www.elysee.fr/declarations/article/initiative-pour-l-europe-discours-d-emmanuel-macron-pour-une-europe-souveraine-unie-democratique/] Mesdames et Messieurs les Ministres, Mesdames et Messieurs les Parlementaires, Monsieur le Préfet, Monsieur le Recteur, Mesdames et Messieurs les Présidents d’université, Mesdames et Messieurs, Je suis venu vous parler d’Europe. « Encore », diront certains. Ils devront s’habituer parce que je continuerai. […]
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The Washington Naval Treaty: Averting the Allied Arms Race
November 2, 2017The 1916 US Naval Act and its 1918 proposed expansion triggered a Naval Arms Race between it and it’s allied nations of Great Britain and Japan.
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Finally, the United States Government invited the principal naval powers to a conference to discuss the situation and end the Naval Arms Race.
A bold opening suggestion from the US government resulted in the scrapping and halting of most naval capital ships.
The Washington Naval Treaty signed on the 6th of February 1922
Targeted Killing of European Foreign Terrorist Fighters in Syria and Iraq
October 25, 2017In recent years, a significant number of European nationals have travelled to Syria or Iraq to train and fight with terrorist groups such as the Islamic State (IS). This flow of foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) has posed serious security concerns for Europe, in particular with regards to the threat posed by FTFs returning to Europe to carry out terrorist attacks. In this context, it appears that a number of States have resorted to targeted strikes against their citizens in Syria and Iraq.
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‘Make our planet great again’. The impact of Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement
June 10, 2017On 1 June 2017 Donald Trump, President of the United States of America (USA) announced that the USA would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement: “We’re getting out, but we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair.” The Paris Climate Agreement which aims at limiting and mitigating the effect of climate change, is an agreement which builds upon the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Trump’s decision has been scorned and condemned by many.
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Battle of Waterloo 1815-2015
June 17, 2015The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815, 200 years ago, near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The French army under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by the armies of the Seventh Coalition, comprising an Anglo-Dutch-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington combined with a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher. Find out more about the Napoleonic wars, the Congress of Vienna and the European balance of power in our collection.
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Scheldt River collection
The Scheldt is a transboundary river which originates in North-Western France and runs through Western Belgium and the South-West of the Netherlands. The Scheldt Estuary is shared between Belgium and the Netherlands. The Dutch section of the estuary is called the Western Scheldt, and is of vital importance as navigation channel to the port of […]
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Joan of Arc Saved France
November 21, 2014This poster by Haskell Coffin (1878-1941), was commissioned by the United States Treasury Department as part of the campaign to raise money for the First World War by having civilians buy war savings stamps.
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The Destruction of the Cathedral of Reims, 1914
July 23, 2014On 20 September 1914, German shellfire burned, damaged and destroyed important parts of the magnificent Cathedral of Reims. The destruction of the Cathedral was generally regarded as an act of sheer vandalism. At the time, it was generally admitted by writers on international law that if the military commander of a besieged place used a church or other building whose immunity had been established, as a stronghold, a storehouse, or an observatory, the besieger might bombard the site without being held responsible for damages caused in consequence of their proximity to other buildings which are liable to bombardment. Even the French war manual itself admitted this.
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