Gaston Doumergue


Pierre Paul Henri Gaston Doumergue was a French politician who served as President of France from 1924 to 1931.
Tasked with important ministerial portfolios, he was first appointed President of the Council of Ministers in 1913, but was forced to leave power a few months after his appointment. He was elected as President of the Senate in 1923.
At the end of his mandate as President of France, refusing to compete against his eventual successor, Doumergue retired, but chaired a government of national unity during the crisis created by the riots of 6 February 1934.

Early life and career

Protestant origins

Gaston Doumergue came from a Protestant family. His father, Pierre Doumergue, was a vigneron in Aigues-Vives. His mother, Françoise Pattus, raised him in the Protestant faith and the admiration of republican ideas. He was also the great-uncle of playwright Colette Audry and filmmaker Jacqueline Audry.
A brilliant student, he claimed to have belonged to the "generation of revenge, animated by a beautiful patriotic ardour", after the defeat of 1870. He studied at the boys' high school in Nîmes, the future.

Judiciary

After a license and a doctorate in law at the School of Law of Paris, he registered in 1885 at the Nîmes bar and participated in the resounding trial of deputy, before entering the judiciary in 1890 as a substitute in Hanoi, French Indochina. His time there was brief because he returned to France on the death of his father in 1891.

Political career

Beginnings in Parliament (1893–1901)

In 1893, while he was a justice of the peace for the commune of Aïn El Arbaa, he returned to Aigues-Vives in France and presented his candidacy for a partial legislative election in December 1893, intended to fill the seat of, a longtime friend who had just been re-elected in the August 1893 election but died suddenly on 18 November, before the opening of the parliamentary session. Nothing destined him for politics and his grandfather had even refused an appointment as mayor of the village in 1836 because of the modesty of his fortune in a tax system.
Encouraged by his mother who followed his career step-by-step, Doumergue was elected as the Radical deputy for Nîmes with 10,101 votes, beating, in the second round, the mayor of Nîmes,, who obtained only 24 votes. He attended the banquet given in Lyon by President Sadi Carnot on 24 June 1894, during which the latter was fatally stabbed by the Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio. This event made him realize the seriousness and the danger of the use of power.
He was re-elected deputy on 8 May 1898, in the first round of the ballot, with 11,514 votes against the conservative Albert de Nesmes-Desmarets. He was very involved in France's colonial policy and, during his speeches at the podium, criticized successive governments for their military interventionism and in particular the occupation of Madagascar. From 1894, he also denounced the "benevolent indifference and not the pronounced sympathy" of public opinion vis-à-vis colonial policy, which masked the looting of conquered territories and the violence of the administration.
His secular and republican convictions made him side with Alfred Dreyfus. His successive mandates were also an opportunity for him to defend small agricultural producers. His influence within the left grew. He was elected deputy for the third time on 27 April 1902, in the first round.
A freemason since 1901, he was initiated into the lodge L'Écho du Grand Orient at the Orient of Nîmes, Grand Orient de France.

Ministerial portfolios (1902–1910)

Under the presidency of Émile Loubet, he was Minister of the Colonies in the Émile Combes government from 1902 to 1905.
He was minister without interruption from 1906 to 1910, first for Trade and Industry, where he created the direction of the merchant navy, then for Public Instruction and Fine Arts from 1908, replacing Aristide Briand. In this capacity, on 4 June 1908, he delivered a speech on behalf of the government of Georges Clemenceau during the transfer of Émile Zola's ashes to the Panthéon, praising the "heroism" of the writer just as he, on 19 March the previous year, had defended the organization of the transfer ceremony on the Assembly platform, against the anti-Dreyfusards.
A fervent supporter of secular schools, he unleashed the most violent school war in the history of France by filing two "secular defense" projects in June 1908 aimed at punishing families who prevented their children from following an education, even an anti-Catholic one. For this, he received the nickname of "escapee from St. Bartholomew" from the polemicist Édouard Drumont. In the field of education, Doumergue also pleaded in favour of the teaching of Arabic in French Algeria.
He also became vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies for a year, from February 1905 to March 1906, between his two ministries. In 1910, he was elected senator for Gard, after the death of Frédéric Desmons. Doumergue was re-elected in 1912 and 1921.

First government (1913–1914)

From 9 December 1913 to 8 June 1914 he was President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs at the request of President Raymond Poincaré, who sought in Doumergue a conciliator capable of forming a cabinet of "republican harmony". From then on, Doumergue strove to reconcile the demands of the Radical party and the interests of the country, in an international horizon that was becoming darker: the statesman took precedence over the partisan. Doumergue needed to defend the law on three-year military service, which he voted through, not without scrutiny, in August 1913: "None of you is expecting us to reopen the debate: that's the law." The proposal to create an income tax by the finance minister, Joseph Caillaux, triggered a controversy among the conservatives, but was finally voted on in July 1914 by a Senate which had been hostile to it for five years. The "Calmette affair", which led to the resignation of the minister, put the government in a difficult position as the tenth legislature ended and a delicate electoral campaign began. Doumergue had, however, warned that he "would in no case stay after the elections".
It was time for a policy of rearmament and closer alliances, which Poincaré and Doumergue carried out successfully. However, Doumergue did not lose sight of the international situation, and the chancelleries were constantly kept on alert. The Radical party easily came out on top in the 1914 French legislative election and this left-wing majority, elected on the theme of peace, caused the President great difficulty in constituting a cabinet that could succeed Doumergue. The latter took advantage of the end of his functions to undertake a trip to Upper Austria.
On 3 August 1914, the day of Germany's declaration of war on France, marking the start of World War I, the new president of the council, René Viviani, called on Doumergue to replace him at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during the composition of his short-lived first government. Then, he was minister of the colonies in the successive governments from 26 August 1914 to 19 March 1917. During this mandate, in the middle of the war, he ensured the security of French possessions and set up a secret agreement with Tsar Nicholas II of Russia which defined the demands that France and Russia would make in future peace negotiations with Germany and Austria-Hungary. However, this treaty became null and void following the October Revolution.
In February 1923, he was elected President of the Senate, replacing Léon Bourgeois.

President of the Republic (1924–1931)

Election to the presidency

His career culminated with his election as President of the Republic on 13 June 1924, for a seven-year term. This accession to the head of state was the result of several successive political events. The preceding 11 and 25 May saw the victory of the Cartel des Gauches in the legislative elections, despite a higher number of votes for the right and thanks to an electoral law granting a bonus to alliances. Raymond Poincaré, the President of the Council since 1922, having been disavowed, submitted his resignation to President Alexandre Millerand. The cartelists claimed power in the "smallest cogs of the administration". Paul Painlevé was brought to the head of the Chamber thanks to the votes of the Cartel also led by Léon Blum, Édouard Herriot, and Aristide Briand against the candidate of the right, André Maginot. The appointment of Frédéric François-Marsal was taken as a provocation and his government lasted only two days.
Thus, the left, which forced Alexandre Millerand to resign, then believed it could bring Painlevé to the presidency, but the moderates thwarted his ambitions by massively turning to Gaston Doumergue, who already benefitted from some of the votes on the left. He received 515 votes out of 815 voters, against 309 for Painlevé and 21 for Zéphyrin Camélinat, the first communist candidate in a presidential election.

Domestic policy

He appointed the mayor of Lyon, Édouard Herriot, as head of government and charged him with establishing a policy of symbolic change to satisfy the electorate. The cartel state was installed, with its members holding a majority of the presidencies of parliamentary committees, as well as the major positions in the administration. The scandal of irregularities at the Bank of France overthrew the government and Doumergue resolved to appoint Paul Painlevé as President of the Council in order to unite Radical and socialist voices, playing with designations according to the parliamentary pendulum.
On 5 July 1924 Gaston Doumergue proclaimed the official opening of the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris during the opening ceremony held at the Stade olympique de Colombes in the presence of the President of the International Olympic Committee, Pierre de Coubertin, the members of the IOC, the President of the French Olympic Committee, Justinien Clary, the members of the FOC, as well as the 44 participating delegations.
Doumergue's seven-year term was marked by the prosperity of France during the interwar period and the Années folles, but also by significant ministerial instability and financial difficulties caused by the fall of the franc. Called to the Ministry of Finance in July 1926, Poincaré instituted a policy of austerity by bringing the franc back to its real value through a sharp devaluation. He also restored confidence and managed to boost a flagging economy. This neo-liberal policy also generated a period of economic and financial prosperity, at a time when the United States was hit hard by the stock market crash of 1929. Progress in technical industry, particularly in the steel industry and automobiles, contributed to the country's growth. Production capacity thus increased by 45% over the 1920s. To support this development, Doumergue reinforced a centrist policy and instituted workers' social insurance.
In May 1930, he went to the departments of Algeria, to the lands he had known in the first years of his career, for the commemorations of the centenary of French Algeria, accompanied by a delegation of eight ministers and of several dozen deputies. The following year, a few weeks before the end of his mandate, he commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the French protectorate of Tunisia.