Officers in charge of the French Navy department during the Third Republic, 1870-1940

In the early years of the Third Republic, the French Minister of Marine was almost always a senior serving officer, generally an admiral. As time passed, however, this tradition began to erode as civilians held the post with greater frequency, until by the mid-twentieth century the Minister of Marine was nearly always a civilian official. In this essay, Jean de Preneuf explains how and why this transformation took place, and what it suggests about the whole issue of civil-naval relations in a modern democracy.