Charles Louis Auguste Jacques Seydoux (1870–1929) was a French diplomat, economist and Director of Commercial Relations at the
French Foreign Ministry
The Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs () is the ministry of the Government of France that handles France's foreign relations. Since 1855, its headquarters have been located at 37 Quai d'Orsay, close to the National Assembly. The term Qu ...
.
Seydoux was the son of Anne Elisabeth (Sers) and Louis Auguste Seydoux. He was the organiser of the Blockade Department during the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
and was Assistant Director for Commercial Affairs from May 1919 to October 1924. He was then Deputy Director of Political and Commercial Affairs from until December 1926. He was estimated by his colleagues as the most creative thinker on political matters and he wrote every major paper on economics at the Foreign Ministry for eight years. During the 1920s he was the chief reparations expert on the French side and was firmly in favour of Franco-German economic rapprochement.
The historian
Stephen Schuker called Seydoux "by far the most lucid mind among senior French bureaucrats in the 1920s...self-effacing, nonpolitical, but independent-minded who put his expertise at the service of the most diverse political superiors and managed to win the admiration of them all".
[Schuker, p. 83 and n.]
Works
*''De Versailles au Plan Young'' (Paris: Plon, 1932).
Notes
Further reading
*Stanislas Jennesson, ‘L’Europe de Jacques Seydoux’, ''Revue Historique'' 299, 20. 1 (1998), pp. 123–143.
*Stanislas Jeannesson, ‘Jacques Seydoux et la diplomatie économique dans la France de l’apres-guerre’, ''RI'', 121 (2005), pp. 15–17.
*N. Jordan, ‘The reorientation of French diplomacy in the 1920s: the role of Jacques Seydoux’, ''English Historical Review'', 117, 473 (2002), pp. 870–873.
*Georges-Henri Souto, ‘Die deutschen Reparationen und das Seydoux-Projekt, 1920-1921’, ''Vierteljahrschaft fur Zeitgeschichte'' 23 (1975), pp. 237–270.
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Seydoux, Jacques
1870 births
1929 deaths
French diplomats
French economists