Le Cardinal Lavigerie, 1825-1892: L'Église, l'Afrique et la France by François RenaultReview by: William A. Hoisington, Jr.The American Historical Review, Vol. 98, No. 3 (Jun., 1993), p. 885Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2167625 .

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Modern Europe 885

an anomaly. May 1871 was indeed a very violent month. But murderous violence, as la semaine sang- lante demonstrated, was above all a monopoly of the state; somewhere between 25,000 and 100,000 com- munards perished at the hands of the Versailles forces.

Did the unfortunate Alain de Moneys, who suf- fered a truly ghastly death, really become the plat du jour in what was a poor region-and not a particularly gastronomic one, despite its almost inadvertent inclu- sion in 1790 in a department known for the pleasures of the table? Petit noble braise'a la facon charentaise? It is a good story, and a tragic one, even if the peasants of Hautefaye and the nearby communes did not really eat Alain de Moneys.

JOHN M. MERRIMAN

Universite Lumie're, Lyon II

FRANSOIS RENAULT. Le Cardinal Lavigerie, 1825-1892: L'tglise, I'Afrique et la France. Paris: Fayard. 1992. Pp. 698. 168 fr.

Best remembered for his thunderbolt "toast of Alg- iers" in November 1890, which began the official Ralliement, "rally," of the Catholic church to the republican regime in France, Charles Lavigerie was a high churchman whose missionary zeal in Africa and the Near East made him an instrument of French imperial expansion.

Francois Renault's excellent and sympathetic biog- raphy gives full scope to Lavigerie's missions, partic- ularly in North Africa where in a misreading of history, a misunderstanding of Islam, and a mistaken belief in the potential for conversion, he hoped to "restore" Christianity to the Arab and Berber popu- lations. Despite these errors, Lavigerie's thought on the role of missionaries abroad, adapting their meth- ods to the languages and customs of native societies rather than seeking to assimilate native peoples to European ways, as well as on the church's evangelical and "civilizing mission," converged with that of other late-nineteenth-century French imperialists. This is why, although the church was the favored target of the political leaders of the Third Republic at home, anticlericalism was not an item for export. At the time of the French military occupation of Tunisia in 1881, Lavigerie and the soldiers worked hand in hand.

Cardinal of the Roman church, confidant of Pope Leo XIII, archbishop of Algiers and Carthage, La- vigerie sought to conciliate the church with the mod- ern world. Indeed, his inability to exert influence as an energetic and rather authoritarian church re- former in France (as the bishop of Nancy, 1863-67) led him to take his remarkable talents for church building, education, organization, and money-raising to Algiers in 1867. Missionary effort-he founded the White Fathers (Peres blancs) and White Sisters (Soeurs blanches)-only increased Lavigerie's conviction that,

despite the belief of many French to the contrary, Christianity was not opposed to freedom, justice, present-day culture, or science. His campaign to end slavery and the slave trade in Africa-arguably the most important "crusade" of his life-demonstrated his and the church's commitment to these values.

Given Lavigerie's credentials as both churchman and patriot, his up-to-date notions about the church and its place in society, and his increasingly concilia- tory attitude toward the French state (which showed every sign of staying put), it is not surprising that in "the most daring act of his life" (p. 589, quoting the words of Lavigerie's secretary), the cardinal lifted his glass to the republic. Although Lavigerie acted on the express orders of the pope, he alone took the heat- and letters smeared with excrement-from those intransigents among the clergy and the faithful who wanted no compromise with the godless republic. To Lavigerie's surprise and dismay Leo XIII waited fifteen months before revealing his own hand in the Ralliement policy and another three before speaking out plainly to France's cardinals: "Accept the Repub- lic, that is, the existing and constituted authority in your country" (p. 634). Although the Ralliement occu- pies one slim chapter in a book that explores the multiple aspects of Lavigerie's career, it illustrates, perhaps better than anything else, the cardinal's ever tumultuous effort to marry his church to his century.

WILLIAM A. HOISINGTON, JR.

University of Illinois, Chicago

NICOLE JORDAN. The Popular Front and Central Europe: The Dilemmas of French Impotence, 1918-1940. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1992. Pp. xvi, 348. $59.95.

This is a meaty and thought-provoking book. At first glance the title may seem ambiguous, with both the Popular Front and the dates 1918-40 figuring in it, but one soon realizes that Nicole Jordan aims to put the years of Leon Blum's premiership in the context of the entire interwar period. Thus; we have the prologue, the main story, and the epilogue.

In the first two chapters Jordan outlines the pre- 1936 background of the eastern alliances. She con- vincingly analyzes Gen. Maurice Gamelin's strategy- if it deserves that name-of keeping military opera- tions away from France's borders. As she rightly concludes, "By always attempting to fight the war elsewhere, Gamelin in effect made it impossible to fight at all" (p. 301). The rest of the book considers Blum and the issues of economic policy, military (mainly Franco-Polish) issues in 1936, and the intri- cate negotiations with the Little Entente. Finally, Jordan examines the 1938-39 crises and the fall of France, and Blum and Czechoslovakia in 1938.

There is interesting and well-documented evidence in virtually every part of this book. Jordan's approach

AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW JUNE 1993

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