ABSTRACT
After the war French leaders struggled to find a solution to two fundamental problems: how to maintain French security against a resurgence of German power, and how to ensure the payment of reparations to stabilise French finances. Raymond Poincaré was no more successful than his predecessors in achieving these aims. France’s domestic politics, the state of its finances, the divisions among its élites and bureaucracy, the position of its allies, the international perception of France and the personality of its leader conspired to deny Poincaré any real freedom of manoeuvre and rendered French foreign policy defensive and incoherent. Nowhere was that incoherence more evident than over events leading to the so-called Ruhr crisis.
