1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hanotaux, Albert Auguste Gabriel

HANOTAUX, ALBERT AUGUSTE GABRIEL (1853–  ), French statesman and historian, was born at Beaurevoir in the department of Aisne. He received his historical training in the École des Chartes, and became maître de conférences in the École des Hautes Études. His political career was rather that of a civil servant than of a party politician. In 1879 he entered the ministry of foreign affairs as a secretary, and rose step by step through the diplomatic service. In 1886 he was elected deputy for Aisne, but, defeated in 1889, he returned to his diplomatic career, and on the 31st of May 1894 was chosen by Charles Dupuy to be minister of foreign affairs. With one interruption (during the Ribot ministry, from the 26th of January to the 2nd of November 1895) he held this portfolio until the 14th of June 1898. During his ministry he developed the rapprochement of France with Russia—visiting St Petersburg with the president, Felix Faure—and sent expeditions to delimit the French colonies in Africa. The Fashoda incident of July 1898 was a result of this policy, and Hanotaux’s distrust of England is frankly stated in his literary works. As an historian he published Origines de l’institution des intendants de provinces (1884), which is the authoritative study on the intendants; Études historiques sur les XVI ^e et XVII ^e siècles en France (1886); Histoire de Richelieu (2 vols., 1888); and Histoire de la Troisième République (1904, &c.), the standard history of contemporary France. He also edited the Instructions des ambassadeurs de France à Rome, depuis les traités de Westphalie (1888). He was elected a member of the French Academy on the 1st of April 1897.