A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702019853230 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
development ‘‘over there’’ and life back in Canada, but it doesn’t quite tap in to the
immediate, material ways in which students are connected to international devel-
opment and globalization. Nevertheless, this text does still offer a (mostly) com-
prehensive introduction to international development, and clear connections back
to Canadian policies and interventions in a format and style that is likely to engage
students in connecting their own experience in Canada to pressing global issues.
Julian Jackson
A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle
Allen Lane-Penguin and Harvard: London and Cambridge, MA, 2018; 887 pp. £35.00 (hbk)
ISBN 978-1-8461-4351-9
Reviewed by: George Ross (George.ross@umontreal.ca), Universite
´de Montre
´al, Montreal,
Canada
Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) was one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable
statesmen. Julian Jackson, an eminent historian of contemporary France, has writ-
ten a splendid biography of de Gaulle’s life. He starts with de Gaulle’s nineteenth-
century conservative, Catholic, and patriotic roots. De Gaulle’s father, a teacher in
a Paris Jesuit school was, to cite de Gaulle, ‘‘imbued with a sense of the dignity of
France’’ (11). His son inherited the trait. De Gaulle, always an avid reader, was
steeped in a literature portraying France as a European cultural leader flawed by
repeated political crises. He concluded that nations formed citizens’ social lives and
identities, and that French fractiousness called for strong, unifying leadership pur-
suing uncompromising international realpolitik. Credible military power, at the
heart of de Gaulle’s realist beliefs, accounted for his choice to attend St. Cyr,
France’s officer training school, which led to a military career that began with
trench warfare and captivity in Germany. While climbing the military hierarchy,
he wrote texts that criticized France’s Great War strategies and advocated a pro-
fessionalized, mechanized army. By the 1940 fall of France, he was a brigadier
general and minor government figure. Jackson’s complex, thorough biography
has already been widely and positively reviewed. This review will be narrower,
centring on Jackson’s most significant subplot: de Gaulle’s international outlooks
and practices.
The building of de Gaulle’s legend takes up half of Jackson’s book, beginning
with his London exile and June 1940 broadcast urging French resistance to Germany
and the Vichy regime. Churchill, interested in depriving Hitler of France’s fleet and
colonies, encouraged and funded de Gaulle. De Gaulle had greater ambitions for
restoring French sovereignty and great power status, however, and the wartime allies
balked at them. Roosevelt banked on Vichy as his French instrument and also
sought French decolonization. Churchill depended on Roosevelt strategically and
economically. Both came to dislike the obstinate, arrogant, and disagreeable Free
French leader. Despite this, de Gaulle methodically built a disciplined movement,
recruited political and military volunteers, acquired colonial bases, outmanoeuvred
Book Reviews 333
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