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Pierre Paul Henri Gaston Doumergue (; 1 August 1863 in Aigues-Vives, Gard18 June 1937 in Aigues-Vives) 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.
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 .
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 (which were well-received on the left benches), 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. (2026). 9782130550945, Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 9782130550945
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 Dreyfus affair.
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-Catholicism one. For this, he received the nickname of "escapee from St. Bartholomew" from the Édouard Drumont.Yves Déloye (1994). 9782724606553, Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques. ISBN 9782724606553 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.
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 German Empire'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 Russian Empire 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.
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.
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 Interwar France 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.
Disagreements with his foreign minister, Aristide Briand, only aggravated the colonial crises in Syria and the Rif. After failed attempts at consultation by the prefect in place in Morocco, Doumergue decided to send Marshall Philippe Pétain, who quickly won the Rif War. At the same time, he participated in the inauguration of the Grand Mosque of Paris, with the Moroccan sultan Moulay Youssef, who was on an official visit to France. On this occasion, he became the first French president to quote a hadith: "the best Muslim is the one whose believers have neither hand nor tongue to fear". In French Indochina in the 1920s, the Vietnamese nationalists of the VNQDĐ maintained an independence agitation (assassination of Alfred François Bazin, Yên Bái mutiny, etc.) that colonial authorities repressed with rifle shots and .
In South America, he helped , the director of the Compagnie générale aéropostale, obtain the postal contracts and flyover rights from Brazil and Argentina necessary for the operation of an air transport line.
Moreover, Doumergue's accession to the presidency of the Republic made him the only Protestant head of state known to France since the abjuration of Henry IV, on 25 July 1593. He was also the second unmarried President of the French Republic when he took office, after Napoleon III. Although an "old bachelor", he was nonetheless, according to historian , "sensitive to feminine charm", but his frequent passing liaisons were only the "Parisian manners of politicians". He maintained a long-term liaison with , an associate professor of the university. During his presidential mandate, he had breakfast with her at his former home at 73 Avenue de Wagram every morning, where he went on foot from the Élysée Palace. On 1 June 1931, twelve days before the end of his mandate, he married Gaussal in front of the mayor of the 8th arrondissement of Paris, Gaston Drucker, who had come specially to the Élysée, with the secretary-general of the presidency, Jules Michel, as his witness. Doumergue thus became the first President of the Republic to marry during his mandate. (2026). 9782259216067, Plon. ISBN 9782259216067
His presidential mandate ended on 13 June 1931, and he retired from political life to his wife's home in Tournefeuille, in Haute-Garonne.
His goal was to reform institutions to reduce ministerial instability. This attempt did not succeed; in poor health, it was difficult for him to arbitrate within one of those cabinets in which the greatest hopes are generally placed because they symbolize the unity of the nation, but which are actually made up of ministers from all sides of the political spectrum who do not get along. There was, however, an upturn in public finances, which allowed the price of government bonds to gain ten to twelve points between March and June. He was also weakened by the assassination of Louis Barthou on 9 October, and preferred to resign soon after, on 8 November. René Viviani, who died in 1925, said of him: "In a well-organized democracy, Doumergue would be a justice of the peace in the provinces."
The government organized a state funeral for him, which took place in Nîmes. His grave is located in the small cemetery of Aigues-Vives, where his wife Jeanne () was buried alongside him in 1963.
A bust of Gaston Doumergue is exhibited in the room of the Presidents of the Republic in the Musée de la Révolution française, recalling that he was the first president to be hosted in this former presidential summer residence.
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