page_title: Robert Coulondre
section_title: A diplomatic life
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Coulondre / A diplomatic life
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Подписание первого советско-французского торгового соглашения 11.01.1934. На фотографии отмечены: 1.	Лоран Эйнак 2.	Раймон Патенотр 3.	Михаил Семёнович Островский 4.	Ян Людвигович Адамский 5.	Роберт Кулондр 7.	Константин Владимирович Антонов
context_page_description: Robert Coulondre was a French diplomat who served as the last French ambassador to Germany before World War II.
context_section_description: Coulondre was born in Nîmes, the son of the politician Gaston Coulondre. As the Coulondres were a Protestant family, they were very loyal to the republic with its principles of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité for all people. After obtaining a university degree in Chinese, he joined the Quai d'Orsay in 1909. Coulondre was stationed in London in May 1909, was appointed attaché at the Foreign Minister's office in March 1912, became assistant consul in Beirut in 1912, and in May 1919 was sent to Morocco.
  In October 1918, Coulondre protested on behalf of France against the actions of the Emir Faisal in attempting to occupy all of Lebanon while asking Paris to dispatch the French Navy to land marines in the coastal cities of Lebanon "before it was too late". Coulondre also delivered a protest to the Emir Faisal, pointing out the Sykes-Picot Agreement had assigned Lebanon to France, leading Faisal to claim his reasons for sending the Arab Northern Army into Lebanon were "purely military". A British attempt to persuade Coulondre to accept the authority of Shurki al-Ayubi, Faisal's governor in Lebanon, as a civil governor under French military authority, was unsuccessful while Coulondre insisting that mostly Christian Lebanon was in the French sphere of influence and he would not have Faisal's representatives from the Muslim Hejaz playing any role in Lebanon. Coulondre met with Field Marshal Sir Edmund Allenby, who apologised to him, insisting it was all a "misunderstanding", and ordered Ayubli out of Beirut on the night of 10 October 1918. The next day, the flag of the Hejaz was lowered while the French tricolor was raised over Beirut. On 16 October 1918, Coulondre told Gilbert Clayton that France wanted to occupy the Beqaa Valley in accordance with the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which was rejected by the British who assigned the valley to Faisal's agents. For the next two years, an uneasy truce prevailed with Faisal insisting that the Lebanese were Arabs and belonged in his state while the French argued that the Maronite Christians did not want to join a Muslim-dominated state.
  In January 1926 he was a delegate to Franco-Soviet economic negotiations. From 1927 to 28 February 1933, he headed the Commercial Relations Department of the Political and Commercial Directorate and subsequently Deputy Director of the Political and Commercial Directorate at the Quai d'Orsay working under the Political Director René Massigli. Coulondre was a member of the "Protestant clan" that dominated the Quai d'Orsay in the first part of the 20th century. From 1920 to 1936, Coulondre had closely studied the German economy and in 1931 when the premier, Pierre Laval, visited Berlin to discuss the crisis caused by the collapse of the banks in Central Europe, Coulondre had accompanied him as an adviser.
  The leading members of the "Protestant clan" were Coulondre, René Massigli, Victor de Lacroix, Albert Kamerer, Jacques Seydoux de Clausonne and his son François Seydoux de Clausonne, all of whom knew each other and worked closely together. Since French Protestants were persecuted under the ancien-regime when the state religion was Roman Catholicism, French Protestants tended to be very supportive of the legacy of the French Revolution with its call for Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.  The "Protestant clan" in the Quai d'Orsay were all supporters of the republic and its values of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité in domestic affairs while favoring a rule-based international order, support for the League of Nations, opposition to appeasement, and an abhorrence of Nazi Germany as the antithesis of everything they believed in.
caption: Signing of the first Franco-Soviet trade agreement 1 November 1934. Coulondre is the man marked 5 in the photograph, fourth from the right.
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