The experience of occupation in the Nord, 1914-18

Much of the French department of the Nord was occupied during the First World War. This book considers the ways in which occupied locals responded to and understood their situation, focusing on key behaviours adopted by locals and the beliefs surrounding such conduct. Key topics examined include forms of complicity, disunity, criminality, resistance, and the memory of the occupation. This local case study calls into question overly-patriotic readings of this experience, and suggests a new conceptual vocabulary to help understand certain civilian behaviours under military occupation. Drawing on extensive primary documentation, this book proposes that a dominant 'occupied culture' existed among locals: a moral-patriotic framework, born of both pre-war socio-cultural norms and daily interaction with the enemy, that guided conduct and was especially concerned with what was considered acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.
An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC) licence.

James E. Connolly is a Lecturer in Modern French History in the French Department at University College London

Introduction Part I: 'Misconduct' and disunity 1 Sexual misconduct 2 General misconduct and popular reprisals 3 Male misconduct 4 Une Sacrée désunion? Conflict continues 5 Moral borderlands: Criminality during the occupation Part II: Popular patriotism and resistance avant la majuscule 6 Notable protests: respectable resistance (coups de gueule polis) 7 Symbolic resistance (coups de coeur) 8 Active resistance (coups de poker, coups d'éclat) Epilogue: Liberation, Remembering and Forgetting Index