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Throughout early-modern history, France and Britain had been enemies on opposite sides of the so-called Second Hundred Years’ War. Nevertheless, during the Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815), Britain became a haven for almost 40,000 French emigrants, and by 1814 France’s restored monarchy no longer viewed Britain as the enemy. The émigrés’ experience in Britain, its impact on long-term diplomatic ties between the two countries, and its wider repercussions for European history is the focus of my research. Did émigré diplomats knowingly follow a policy intended to foster a lasting alliance with Britain? Scholars who view the émigrés as politically impotent ignore the powerful impact French presence had on Britain’s elite. Even as early as 1793, the émigrés’ plight was an asset used by the British government in its negotiations with other European powers. My thesis will answer the aforementioned question by exploring a neglected aspect of the French experience in Great Britain: the émigrés’ social and political interactions with the British public and government and how this may have affected Franco-British diplomacy during the nineteenth century. / Graduate / 0335 / 0582 / sguenett@uvic.ca

This thesis is a cultural history of the early Fabian Society, focusing on the decades between 1884, the Society’s inaugural year, and 1914. The canonical view is that ‘Fabianism,’ which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as the ‘doctrine and principles of the Fabian Society,’ is synonymous with State socialism and bureaucratic ‘efficiency.’ By bringing the methods of cultural history to bear on the Society’s founding members and decades, this thesis reveals that ‘Fabianism’ was in fact used as a dynamic metonymy, not a fixed doctrine, which signified a range of cultural, and even literary, meanings for British commentators in the 1890s and 1900s (Part 1). Further, by expanding the scope of traditional histories of the Fabian Society, which conventionally operate within political and economic sub-fields and focus on the Society’s ‘official’ literature, to include a close examination of the broader discursive context in which ‘Fabianism’ came into being, this thesis sets out to recover the symbolic aspects of the Fabians’ efforts to negotiate what ‘Fabianism’ meant to the English reading public. The Fabians’ conspicuous leadership in the modern education debates and the liberal fight for a ‘free stage,’ and their solidarity with the international political émigrés living in London at the turn of the twentieth century all contribute to this revised perspective on who the founding Fabians were, what they saw themselves as trying to achieve, and where the Fabian Society belonged—and was perceived to belong—in relation to British politics, culture, and society (Part 2). The original contribution of this thesis is the argument that the Fabians explicitly and implicitly evoked Matthew Arnold as a precursor in their efforts to articulate a kind of Fabian—latterly social-democratic—liberalism and a public vocation that balanced English liberties and the duty of the State to provide the ‘best’ for its citizens in education and in culture, as in politics.

Entre Beauce et Sologne, le Vendômois est en 1789, une région pauvre, souffrant de la disette, situation à laquelle l’administration révolutionnaire n’a pas su remédier. La vente des biens nationaux en augmentant la propriété foncière des notables qui ont déjà la mainmise sur les trois quarts du sol de la région et contrôlent désormais les institutions politiques et administratives, va asseoir leur influence sur les populations.Si sur le plan de l’agriculture, le système paternaliste disparaît, il n’en laisse pas pour autant place à une économie capitaliste florissante. Le retard dans ce domaine et dans ceux de l’industrie et du commerce, restera important au XIXème siècle. Le bilan des ventes nationales montre la disparition presque totale de la propriété ecclésiastique et la division par trois de la propriété noble. Le transfert de propriété aux paysans, qui peut paraître réel lors des premières ventes, est fortement atténué par le phénomène des reventes qui s’étalent sur les cinquante années suivantes. Le point remarquable, qui apparaît également dans cette étude, est la relative modération de la population vendômoise et des hommes politiques, quand elle a pu les désigner pour l’administrer localement. Attachée aux traditions, la population bien qu’elle ait participé aux acquisitions des biens dits nationaux, a su montrer de la résistance face aux comportements extrêmes des hommes politiques parisiens et blésois. Contrairement à beaucoup d’autres régions françaises plus urbaines, les persécutions et les destructions, qui ont marqué la période des ventes nationales, n’ont pas été systématiques en Vendômois, et c’est tout à son honneur. / In 1789, the traditional area of the Vendômois, bordered by the Beauce and Sologne regions, is poor and the revolutionary authorities have not succeeded in addressing the prevailing food shortage. By growing the landed property of the upper classes,who already had a stronghold on three quarters of the region’s real estate and who would now control the political and administrative system, the sale of “biensnationaux” would reinforce their influence over the population. Although the paternalistic system in the field of agriculture came to an end, it not made way for a flourishing capitalistic system. The lack of development in industry and agriculture will remain important throughout the XIXth century. The outcome of the sale has been an almost complete disappearance of church property whileownership by the nobility was divided by three. The transfer of ownership to the peasantry which might have seemed real at the times of the first sales was greatly diminished by the subsequent resales over the next fifty years. Another noteworthy point which emerges from this study is the sense of moderation of “vendômoise”population, and of those political leaders, when it was able to appoint to administer locally. Although the local population, which had a strong attachment to tradition, did take part in the acquisition of national lands, it resisted to extreme behaviour of the political leaders from Paris and Blois. Unlike what happened in many other more urban french regions, persecutions and destructions which characterized the period of the national sales were not systematic in the Vendômois, much to its credit.