French Exile Journalism and European Politics, 1792-1814

Between 1792 and 1814 London was home to a flourishing French emigre newspaper and periodical press that served both an exile audience and a Europe-wide French-speaking elite. The experienced journalists who had fled the revolution and staffed the press are revealed as professional activists engaged in an international ideological struggle; their successful counter-revolutionary propaganda affected French foreign policy, while their relationship with their British government patrons remained remarkably independent. The evolving counter-revolutionary ideology of the emigre press was highly influential in driving events in Europe, both clandestinely and more openly; only with the accession of Bonaparte in 1799, and the return of many of the exiles to France, did emigre propaganda crystallise into a reactionary anti-Bonaparte press and an ideological framework for Bourbonism. SIMON BURROWS is a lecturer in the School of History at the University of Leeds.