1st Edition

Domestic Surveillance and Social Control in Britain and France during World War I

By Gary Edward Girod Copyright 2024
168 Pages
by Routledge

168 Pages
by Routledge

168 Pages
by Routledge

Domestic Surveillance and Social Control in Britain and France during World War I examines the rapid development and expansion of agencies and governmental power to monitor and control the homefront in Britain and France during World War I. It documents the rapid shift in focus from the feared but unimportant threat of German espionage toward homegrown radicals. The book utilizes a vast array... Read more

Introduction

 

            Theorizing Surveillance

The historical development of domestic surveillance in Britain & France from the French Revolution to the mid-18th Century

Fear shifted from the middle and working classes to foreign spies and subversives

A Shared History: The development of domestic surveillance in France and Britain

Methodology, Sources and Organization

 

Chapter 1: Control through Cooperation, Pre-War through 1914

 

            Britain, The Press and Public Opinion before the War

            Silencing and Tracking Dissent

France: The Union Sacrée

Conclusion

 

Chapter 2: Total War and Internal Surveillance, Britain and France 1915

 

    Britain: Conscientious Objectors and Industrial Unrest on the Clyde

    France: Police, Labor movements and Pacifism

    Conclusion

 

Chapter 3: Successful Suppression? 1916

 

    Britain: Crushing Labor and the Anti-War Movement

    France: The Last Calm

    Conclusion

 

Chapter 4: 1917: The May Strikes

 

    Lloyd George’s War

    France: The Breaking Point

    Conclusion

 

Chapter 5: 1918: The Specter of Communism and the Surveillance of Citizens

 

    Countering Bolshevism in Britain

    Le Tigre

    Conclusion

 

Chapter 6: The Uneasy Aftermath

 

    Britain: The Battle of George Square

    Victory and Defeat in France

    Conclusion

 

Conclusion

 

Bibliography

Biography

Gary Edward Girod received his Ph.D. from the University of Houston in 2021. He researches World War I-era domestic intelligence and labor. His article “The women who make the guns” (2019) examines women munition workers in Paris and Glasgow between 1914 and 1919.