French Exile Journalism and European Politics, 1792-1814 by Simon BurrowsPublication Date: 2000-12-07
"Between 1792 and 1814 London was home to a flourishing French emigre newspaper and periodical press that served both an exile audience and a pan-European francophone elite. Staffed by experienced journalists who had fled the revolution, the emigre press was commercially successful, politically influential, and a major bone of contention between Britain and France during the brief peace of 1802-3. Thereafter, it was hired to fight Britain's propaganda war against Napoleonic France on continental Europe, but nevertheless remained surprisingly independent of its Foreign Office patrons." "This study discusses the staffing, production and dissemination of emigre journals, arguing that emigre journalists were professional activists engaged in an international ideological and propaganda struggle, who combined journalism with a variety of other counter-revolutionary activities. It also describes how French campaigns to control the emigre papers influenced and even drove foreign policy, and explores the relations of the exile press with its British government patrons." "Later chapters trace the ideological development of the emigre press and its impact on France and Europe. They show how counter-revolutionary ideology evolved continuously throughout the 1790s, but positions became fixed and polarised after the accession of Bonaparte in 1799. By 1803 most emigres had returned to France, leaving an ideologically united, reactionary, anti-Bonaparte press which played a key, but ultimately counter-productive, role in the evolution of a Black Legend of Napoleon and the shaping of an ideological framework for Bourbonism." "This study will be of interest to all students of the press, European politics and the French revolution and counter-revolution."--BOOK JACKET.