Norman Angell and His French Contemporaries, 1905-1914

On the occasion of the Centenary of the publication of Norman Angell's The Great Illusion, this article explores the extent to which Angell was influenced by his French contemporaries. He was living in France for the ten years previous to the book's publication and working as a newspaper editor and commentator. The main currents of French political thinking of that period are explored. The main conclusion reached is that Angell had little impact on French thinking at the time and it had not much on him. But it is argued that the reasons for this seeming mutual ignorance had profound effects on the development of thinking about international relations before 1914 and continue to haunt the way we think about IR in the “Anglo-Saxon” countries and in France itself.