davywavy | Interview techniques

A friend of mine, Ian, works for the Foreign Office. In fact he's rather highly placed these days, having just been posted out to Kuala Lumpur to be Our Man in Malaysia. However, what the civil service tends to do is post people to a lot of different areas to make them as knowledgable and well rounded as possible, so in the past Ian has also run the Iran desk during the last Gulf War (where it was his job to keep amicable relations with the Iranians whilst President Bush was calling them the 'Axis of Evil'), and he's been involved in recruiting people to work for the F.O. as well.
One part of the selection procedure for the Foreign Office is an interview. Unlike most jobs, where the interview takes the form of sitting in front of a panel and being judged on how glibly you can lie about your work experience and aptitude, the Foreign Office interview process works somewhat differently.
Candidates are asked to pick a subject - it can be anything, but contemporary and recent historical social and political choices are the most common and preferred - that they consider themselves knowledgeable about and then they are expected to have a debate on that subject as their interview. It's not a test of their knowledge of the subject (they're expected to be fairly well-informed as they chose the subject in the first place), but it's a test of how well they can present and argument, react to counterarguments, and remain persuasive and diplomatic whilst doing so.
The twist to this is this: the candidate choses the subject area, but the interviewer chooses what point of view the candidate must argue. There is a famous example of an Indian candidate who chose as his subject 'The Indian Nuclear Deterrent' and was completely stumped when asked to argue the case for Indian unilateral disarmament.

This preamble leads me up to my question to you lot for today.
Imagine you are applying to a job at the Foreign office, and you have been invited to interview. What do you choose as your specialist subject?
I'll be asking questions.

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From:

ksirafai.livejournal.com

Y'see, there are problems there. Mainly that my modern history is a little bit on the shabby side...

Anything going for Louis XIV 1661 - 1683? :) It's... more modern than most, and I've kindly lopped off his later years, during which he largely went 'I will own Europe... All of it, yes, all of it... mwa ha haaa...' *grins*

From:

davywavy.livejournal.com

I should like you to argue the case that France would be a far greater world power now if Louis had left control in the hands of the Cardinals.

From:

ksirafai.livejournal.com

There are a few minor technical problems there (like the Cardinals who ruled for his minority being dead when he took absolute control) but we'll see what we can do. I assume that research is not really available...

Louis XIV was the son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. He was four years old when his father died, leaving Anne as Regent. Anne handed the majority of political power and responsibility to Cardinal Mazarin, an Italian rumorued to be her lover.

Upon his death in 1661, when Louis was 23, the king took complete control of his government for the first time. The situation was turbulent socially - there were widespread riots and social discontent among the gentry and lower classes in a series of disputes known collectively as 'La Fronde', and Protestantism was on the rise (which Mazarin had done little to stem, instead appeasing them quietly to prevent more disorder).

Politically, the Cardinalate Regency put France into a strong position to continue its expansionist policies in later years. The military successes of Condé and Turenne were later built on by Louvois and Vauban.

Louis' major achievement in his early years was the appointment of Colbert as his prime minister. Colbert was very competent, organisign post offices, centralising government and decision-making bodies (to the extent that any decision that affected more than the local parlements had to go to the King eventually) and reorganisign taxation, but he was also economically conservative and believed in the theories of mercantilism. This posits that there is only a fixed amount of wealth in the world, and to gain more of this sum total, it is necessary to take it from other trading bodies - in this time and place, the other European powers.

This set the stage economically and socially for, eventually, the War of the Grand Alliance (the majority of the European powers, whether Catholic or Protestant, allied against Louis XIV), the War of Spanish Succession (ensuring that the Bourbon dynasty of which Louis was a part had control of the Spanish throne and effectively ending the Habsburg dominance of Spain, but not the Holy Roman Empire, and also weakening France by bleeding her of manpower and money) and a century later the French Revolution.

The Cardinalate Regency, assuming that the next Cardinal of France would have followed similar policies (which is sadly impossible to state with any surety; the Cardinal quickly became a nonentity politically in a state based on fierce economic strictures and aggressive expansion - the only nod to religious fervour Louis XIV displayed was in believing that France must be unified religiously as it was politically, and revoking the Edict fo nantes, which had previously allowed Protestants the right to worship in France) would, on this presumption, have allowed France to remain more peaceful and conservative.

(Contd.)

From:

ksirafai.livejournal.com

...

The implied lack of aggressive military and social changes would have allowed Europe to remain closer to its pre-1660 image for a prolonged period of time and would have reduced the social upheaval of the period to such an extent that the French Revolution and its spiritual successors would not have happened; at this point, one can possibly suggest that the American War of Independence, heavily supported by the French revolutionary and, later, Napoleon's governments may well not have had the success it had - though popular sources suggest that England at the time did not have the resources to keep the Americas completely secured and under control.

The loss of the unified Americas and the presumed lack of the First Republic (and, presumably, all following Republics until the social structures of Europe led to the gradual decline of the absolute monarchy) would have meant that Europe itself would have been a far stronger world power; though the Habsburgs would undoubtedly hold a stronger position over the following century, lacking Louis' aggressive instincts to weaken them.

It can then be supposed that the European Union would have been a strong influence on world history and, maybe, that this Union, rather than that of the US, would have dictated world history over the 20th century.

In summary, the Cardinalate France of the late 17th century would have led to a calmer, more peacable 18th century for France and thereby for most of the world. France itself would have lost political power within Europe, but Europe would have gained significantly on global terms, allowing the EU to be the greater world power of the title argument.

This case, however, rests on speculation. There is no evidence of the Cardinal following Mazarin being at all competent politically, and Mazarin's death means he is not a viable candidate for my theorising.

Questions?

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