ABSTRACT
We have undertaken our analysis in le Nord and le Pas-de-Calais, two départements which, owing to their geographical situation, were likely to be involved in any armed confrontation with Britain. This situation created and crystallized an anti-British rhetoric that increasingly came to shape the authorities’ management of resident and visiting Britons who fell under the jurisdiction of their départements. The principal authorities in question were the prefects, and it is important to distinguish between the language that they used towards those they administered and to local officials, such as the mayors, and that which they adopted in their dealings with central government, primarily in their reports to the Minister of the Interior. We also need to note the moment at which the prefects began to see the need to galvanize public opinion, encouraging popular participation in the war effort and sustaining enthusiasm among the conscripts, and the point at which they began to organize to these ends and to give an account of their activity, and to analyse its limitations and shortcomings. Finally, we must assess the depth of Anglophobia in their discourse, consider its impact upon the population, and ask how far it corresponded to an existing Anglophobia, whether it reinforced it, or whether, in fact, the rhetoric actually misrepresents both the real reactions of the population and the actual measures taken by the prefects.
