Jacques Bainville

Jacques Bainville
Jacques Bainville in 1922
Born	February 9, 1879 Vincennes, Val-de-Marne, France
Died	February 9, 1936 Paris, France
Occupation	Historian, journalist

Jacques Pierre Bainville (February 9, 1879 in Vincennes, Val-de-Marne – February 9, 1936 in Paris) was a French historian and journalist. A geopolitical theorist, pre-occupied by Franco-German relations, he was a leading figure in the monarchist Action Française. His writings displayed his hatred of disorder, of romanticism, liberalism, democracy, internationalism, the French Revolution, and especially, his hatred of Germany.

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. Bainville argued that the treaty's debts bound German states closer to Prussia and weakened neighbors to the South and East (principally Austria-Hungary) that 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". He castigated Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George for what he perceived as naive moralism that dangerously neglected geopolitical 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.

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. 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. 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 them as proof that Italy was regaining her strength.