The Society of Prisoners

Abstract

War captivity is an ideal observatory to address three interrelated questions. First, I argue that in order to understand what a prisoner of war was in the eighteenth century, from a legal viewpoint, we must forget what we know about this notion, as it has been shaped by twentieth-century international conventions. In the eighteenth century, the distinction between a prisoner of war, a hostage, a criminal and a slave was not always clear-cut, in theory and even more so in practice. Second, war captivity tells us something important about the eighteenth-century state, how it transformed itself, and why it endured. The third approach is a social history of international relations. The aim here is to understand how eighteenth-century societies were impacted by war: how the detention of foreign enemies on home soil revealed and challenged social values, representations, hierarchies, and practices. The book’s argument hinges on the experience of prisoners of war as the pivot of social relations within and outside the prison, between Britons and French and between prisoners and host communities. War does not simply destroy society, but it also creates new sorts of social ties.The book addresses a wide range of topics, such as the ethics of war, philanthropy, forced migrations, the sociology of the prison and the architecture of detention places. One of its strengths is the sheer magnitude and diversity of the archival material used, in English and in French, most of which have been little explored by other historians.

Enfermement et graffiti

“…Certaines inscriptions fonctionnent comme des un temps difficile à mesurer et à compter. Dans ce registre, il n'est pas impossible de lire ces graffiti comme des activités destinées à rompre l'ennui de la vie carcérale, à l'instar de ces prisonniers français dans l'Angleterre du xviii e siècle qui taillaient de petits objets, faits d'os de mouton ou de boeuf, de cheveux et de bois, pour fabriquer des modèles de bateaux, des échiquiers ou des boîtes à bijoux 85 . De petites inscriptions, dans les prisons de Palerme, renvoient également à des aspects relativement méconnus et peu étudiés de la vie carcérale de l'époque moderne : une femme nue (Daniel Arasse l'aurait peut-être qualifiée de « pin-up ») est représentée sur la paroi d'une latrine dans une position qui n'est pas sans rappeler celle de la Vénus d'Urbin du Titien et sa charge érotique 86 .…”