Marianne Is Watching: Intelligence, Counterintelligence, and the Origins of the French Surveillance State

Polly Corrigan Book Prize shortlist

Professional intelligence became a permanent feature of the French state as a result of the army’s June 8, 1871, reorganization following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Intelligence practices developed at the end of the nineteenth century without direction or oversight from elected officials, and yet the information gathered had a profound influence on the French population and on pre–World War I Europe more broadly.

In Marianne Is Watching ...