Towards Norms and Sanctions: Interwar Franco–Belgian Border Conflict over the Insalubrity of French Factories

Abstract

Downstream from the industrial French cities of Roubaix and Tourcoing, it took more than a century of exceptional insalubrity in the cross-border Espierre valley for France and Belgium to move towards the idea of adopting sanitary norms and sanctions to be imposed on French manufacturers. We propose to focus on the interwar period to try to understand the path that was followed for the different actors to agree on this idea. By tracing the history of an environmental controversy that was among the first to end up before an international jurisdiction, we highlight the important place this question had in the construction of Franco–Belgian border relations during a period of great tensions in Europe.