The French statesman Aristide Briand (1862-1932) is best known for his efforts to preserve international peace in the period after World War I. He also played an important role in the separation of church and state in France.

Aristide Briand was born on March 28, 1862, at Nantes, where his parents were innkeepers. Educated in public schools in Nantes, he went to Paris to study law and returned to practice at Saint-Nazaire. There he entered politics and was defeated for the Chamber of Deputies in 1889. He then joined the syndicalist movement and became an advocate of the revolutionary general strike as the means of transforming society (the labor movement at this time also favored the general-strike tactic).

Moving to Paris in 1893, Briand worked as a journalist and campaigned unsuccessfully for the Chamber in 1893 and 1898. He began to acquire an important position in Socialist circles, where he associated with the more...