Waldeck-Rousseau, René

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WALDECK-ROUSSEAU, RENÉ

WALDECK-ROUSSEAU, RENÉ (1846–1904), prime minister of France (1899–1902) and a central figure in the campaign to separate church and state.

Pierre-Marie-René Waldeck-Rousseau was born in western France, the son of a lawyer from Nantes who served in the Constituent Assembly of 1848 that established the Second Republic. He followed his father's career, but had only moderate success in his practice at Rennes (Brittany). Waldeck-Rousseau was educated in Catholic schools, but had left the church and supported the anticlerical republicanism of Léon Gambetta (1838–1882). He joined the Gambettist republican party at Rennes and was elected at age thirty-two to the Chamber of Deputies in the republican landslide of 1879.

Waldeck-Rousseau joined Gambetta's opportunist faction in the Chamber, and was rewarded with the Ministry of the Interior in Gambetta's only cabinet (1881–1882). In these years he developed a liberal republicanism, supporting individual liberty and championing the Press Law of 1881 that created broad freedom of the press. When he stood for reelection in 1881, his program stressed the freedom of labor. As minister, Waldeck-Rousseau drafted a law of associations granting workers full rights of unionization. Gambetta died before this law could be adopted, and Waldeck-Rousseau joined many Gambettists in supporting Jules Ferry (1832–1893). He received the Ministry of the Interior in Ferry's government of 1884–1885, in which post he won adoption of the Law of Associations in 1884, a law often referred to as the Waldeck-Rousseau Law.

When Ferry was driven from office in 1885, and the climate of opinion shifted against liberal reforms, Waldeck-Rousseau lost interest in parliamentary life. He chose not to stand for reelection in 1889 and devoted himself to his Parisian legal practice. Waldeck-Rousseau's mastery of the civil code, attention to detail, and skill at untangling complexity earned him considerable wealth in commercial law.

church and state

After a decade in retirement from politics, Waldeck-Rousseau was persuaded to run for a vacant senate seat from the Loire in 1894 and was elected by such an overwhelming margin that friends persuaded him to run for the presidency in 1895, although he lost to Félix Faure (1841–1899). He returned to the senate for a full term in 1897, again by a huge margin. Rather than champion legislative causes, Waldeck-Rousseau used his political popularity to work behind the scenes to construct a "great republican circle" linking all elements of French republicanism. This put Waldeck-Rousseau in a respected, centrist republican position during the most tumultuous phase of the Dreyfus affair, with the result that he was asked to form a cabinet in June 1899, following the republican electoral victory.

Waldeck-Rousseau served as prime minister for one of the longest terms of the Third Republic (1899–1902) and did so at a time of great national crisis. He tried to create a cabinet with broad appeal, taking the Ministry of the Interior and Religion for himself, retaining Theophile Delcassé (1852–1923) at the Quai d'Orsay, and including such diverse figures as General Gaston-Alexandre-Auguste de Galliffet (1830–1909, who had led the suppression of the Paris Commune of 1871 and was detested on the left) at the Ministry of War and Alexandre Millerand (1859–1943, the first socialist to sit in a government) at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

Waldeck-Rousseau steered France through a period of labor unrest, critical court cases associated with the Dreyfus affair, and the beginning phases of the radical anticlericalism of the early twentieth century. He strove to maintain a moderate course on questions concerning the church, and he opposed the separation of church and state, although he merely postponed it for a few years.

The debate on religion under Waldeck-Rousseau focused on revising the Law of Associations. In November 1899, he drafted a bill to apply this law to religious congregations. The debate on this bill, and the application of the resulting Law of Associations of 1901, accelerated the demand for the separation of church and state, and this ultimately led to Waldeck-Rousseau's resignation. He had wanted government control over the Catholic religious orders, allowing them some freedom to act (analogous to his law for workers in 1884). Instead, the Law of Associations of 1901 became the instrument by which most religious orders were disbanded.

Although his republican coalition won a major electoral victory in June 1902, the discouraged prime minister chose to retire, citing his health. His successor, Emile Combes (1835–1921), then carried out the anticlerical agenda of separation; Waldeck-Rousseau died following an operation for cancer of the pancreas in 1904.