ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the European security dilemmas that drove French policy before, during and after the Italian attack on Ethiopia. It describes the African and colonial dimensions of the Ethiopian Crisis as seen from the perspective of those at the metropolitan centre of the French Empire. The chapter re-examines the rationale behind French reactions to the Ethiopian War. If France emerges with little credit from the Ethiopian War, the Crisis did change French behaviour fundamentally, setting a once-adept practitioner of nineteenth-century style imperialist diplomacy on the path to African confrontation with the Italian regime. The deepening rift among the Europeans of Tunisia over the course of the Ethiopian War held a mirror to wider problems of French empire security as Italy edged closer towards irrevocable hostility. Flavoured with traces of Socialist loathing for Italian fascism, French foreign policy in the immediate aftermath of the Ethiopian crisis was sanguine and rational nonetheless.
