The conclusion (“epilogue”) to this volume about the history of French intelligence from the Franco-Prussian War to the outbreak of World War I opens with a novel idea: “On July 28, 1914 in support of her ally Russia, France declared war on Germany” (255). To say the least, that an academic historian and author should misconstrue who declared war on whom in the seminal conflict of the twentieth century is concerning. If history had been as Bauer records, and not how it was when Germany declared war on France on August 3, 1914, the Versailles Treaty and the rest of the twentieth century would have been very different. In a sentence later in this volume, Bauer confuses deaths and casualties, claiming that the war resulted in “over nine million casualties” when the number of military and civilian “casualties” was 40 million (255). Unfortunately, the volume is marred by another twenty or so errors in French spellings, gender, and equivalences—for example, “Archives de la Ministre des Affaires Etrangères” rather than Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères and “the strategy of the offense” rather than the strategy of the offensive (77 n. 31, 132).This observation is not mere pedantry; such errors echo the author’s wider apparent misunderstanding of French intelligence—its motives, its modus operandi, and its impact on French defense and security policy leading up to World War I. Bauer’s contention is that “the establishment of professional organisations in France at the end of the nineteenth century played a vital role in the emergence of a fear-driven surveillance state” (2). She takes issue with authorities on French intelligence, such as Porch and Andrew, for failing to take account of its “important role in shaping the character of the army and the nation” (133).1 According to Bauer, “Thanks to decades of intelligence practice, war became viewed as inevitable” (133). For much of the period following the French defeat of 1870 until World War I, “spy mania had indeed taken hold” (135); the espionage law of the 1880s placed France on “a path toward a new, xenophobic surveillance regime” (137). Bauer herself explains, however, that Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Holland already had such legislation in place and that France was merely playing catch-up (140).This flawed perspective is a pity since Bauer has marshaled an impressive bibliography, including fascinating nineteenth-century works on intelligence from legal and organizational points of view. Her archival sources are numerous, from the well-known F7 police files to more original material on the structuring of intelligence in the Service Historique de la Défense at Vincennes. Although interdisciplinary history is to be applauded, Bauer unfortunately views too much of this material through the prism of “the panoptical disciplinary power discussed most famously by Foucault” (10).2 Like political leaders who selectively use raw intelligence data to further their preconceived ideas and policies, historians can fall foul of this fatal error. Though it is well known that France’s turbulent political history encouraged concern about internal threats, Bauer over-eggs the pudding in highlighting a “spymania” that she claims began to subsume France only a decade or so after the Franco-Prussian War. Once on this track, it is no wonder that the logical but ahistorical conclusion should be that France declared war on Germany.
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Open Access
Dec 1, 2022
Estella Carpi 
