Pierre Paul Henri Gaston Doumergue (French: [ɡastɔ̃ dumɛʁɡ]; 1 August 1863 – 18 June 1937) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1924 to 1931.
Tasked with important ministerial portfolios, he was first appointed President of the Council of Ministers in 1913, but was forced to leave power a few months after his appointment. He was elected as President of the Senate in 1923. At the end of his mandate as President of France, refusing to compete against his eventual successor, Doumergue retired, but chaired a government of national unity during the crisis created by the riots of 6 February 1934.
Gaston Doumergue came from a Protestant family. His father, Pierre Doumergue, was a vigneron in Aigues-Vives. His mother, Françoise Pattus, raised him in the Protestant faith and the admiration of republican ideas. He was also the great-uncle of playwright Colette Audry and filmmaker Jacqueline Audry.
A brilliant student, he claimed to have belonged to the "generation of revenge, animated by a beautiful patriotic ardour", after the defeat of 1870. He studied at the boys' high school in Nîmes, the future Alphonse-Daudet high school.
After a license and a doctorate in law at the School of Law of Paris, he registered in 1885 at the Nîmes bar and participated in the resounding trial of deputy Numa Gilly, before entering the judiciary in 1890 as a substitute in Hanoi, French Indochina. His time there was brief because he returned to France on the death of his father in 1891.
Beginnings in Parliament (1893–1901)
In 1893, while he was a justice of the peace for the commune of Aïn El Arbaa, he returned to Aigues-Vives in France and presented his candidacy for a partial legislative election in December 1893, intended to fill the seat of Émile Jamais, a longtime friend who had just been re-elected in the August 1893 election but died suddenly on 18 November, before the opening of the parliamentary session. Nothing destined him for politics and his grandfather had even refused an appointment as mayor of the village in 1836 because of the modesty of his fortune in a tax system.
Encouraged by his mother who followed his career step-by-step, Doumergue was elected as the Radical deputy for Nîmes with 10,101 votes, beating, in the second round, the mayor of Nîmes, Gaston Maruéjol, who obtained only 24 votes. He attended the banquet given in Lyon by President Sadi Carnot on 24 June 1894, during which the latter was fatally stabbed by the Italian anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio. This event made him realize the seriousness and the danger of the use of power.
He was re-elected deputy on 8 May 1898, in the first round of the ballot, with 11,514 votes against the conservative Albert de Nesmes-Desmarets. He was very involved in France's colonial policy and, during his speeches at the podium (which were well-received on the left benches), criticized successive governments for their military interventionism and in particular the occupation of Madagascar. From 1894, he also denounced the "benevolent indifference and not the pronounced sympathy" of public opinion vis-à-vis colonial policy, which masked the looting of conquered territories and the violence of the administration.
His secular and republican convictions made him side with Alfred Dreyfus. His successive mandates were also an opportunity for him to defend small agricultural producers. His influence within the left grew. He was elected deputy for the third time on 27 April 1902, in the first round.
A freemason since 1901, he was initiated into the lodge L'Écho du Grand Orient at the Orient of Nîmes, Grand Orient de France.
Ministerial portfolios (1902–1910)
Under the presidency of Émile Loubet, he was Minister of the Colonies in the Émile Combes government from 1902 to 1905.
He was minister without interruption from 1906 to 1910, first for Trade and Industry, where he created the direction of the merchant navy, then for Public Instruction and Fine Arts from 1908, replacing Aristide Briand. In this capacity, on 4 June 1908, he delivered a speech on behalf of the government of Georges Clemenceau during the transfer of Émile Zola's ashes to the Panthéon, praising the "heroism" of the writer just as he, on 19 March the previous year, had defended the organization of the transfer ceremony on the Assembly platform, against the anti-Dreyfusards.
A fervent supporter of secular schools, he unleashed the most violent school war in the history of France by filing two "secular defense" projects in June 1908 aimed at punishing families who prevented their children from following an education, even an anti-Catholic one. For this, he received the nickname of "escapee from St. Bartholomew" from the polemicist Édouard Drumont. In the field of education, Doumergue also pleaded in favour of the teaching of Arabic in French Algeria.
He also became vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies for a year, from February 1905 to March 1906, between his two ministries. In 1910, he was elected senator for Gard, after the death of Frédéric Desmons. Doumergue was re-elected in 1912 and 1921.
From 9 December 1913 to 8 June 1914 he was President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs at the request of President Raymond Poincaré, who sought in Doumergue a conciliator capable of forming a cabinet of "republican harmony". From then on, Doumergue strove to reconcile the demands of the Radical party and the interests of the country, in an international horizon that was becoming darker: the statesman took precedence over the partisan. Doumergue needed to defend the law on three-year military service, which he voted through, not without scrutiny, in August 1913: "None of you is expecting us to reopen the debate: that's the law." The proposal to create an income tax by the finance minister, Joseph Caillaux, triggered a controversy among the conservatives, but was finally voted on in July 1914 by a Senate which had been hostile to it for five years. The "Calmette affair", which led to the resignation of the minister, put the government in a difficult position as the tenth legislature ended and a delicate electoral campaign began. Doumergue had, however, warned that he "would in no case stay after the elections".
It was time for a policy of rearmament and closer alliances, which Poincaré and Doumergue carried out successfully. However, Doumergue did not lose sight of the international situation, and the chancelleries were constantly kept on alert. The Radical party easily came out on top in the 1914 French legislative election and this left-wing majority, elected on the theme of peace, caused the President great difficulty in constituting a cabinet that could succeed Doumergue. The latter took advantage of the end of his functions to undertake a trip to Upper Austria.