In 1783, the officers of the Continental Army created the Society of the Cincinnati. This veterans' organization was to preserve the memory of the revolutionary struggle and pursue the officers' common interest in outstanding pay and pensions. Henry Knox and Frederick Steuben were the society's chief organizers; George Washington himself served as president. Soon, a nationally distributed South Carolina pamphlet accused the Society of treachery; it would lead to the creation of a hereditary nobility in the United States and subvert republicanism into aristocracy; it was a secret government, a puppet of the French monarchy; its charitable fund would be used for bribes. These were only some of the accusations made against the Society. These were, however, unjustified. The author of this book explores why a part of the revolutionary leadership accused another of subversion in the difficult 1780s, and how the political culture of this period predisposed many leading Americans to think of the Cincinnati as a conspiracy.

By the end of the Franco-Prussian War (1870--71), Germany occupied one-third of French territory, thousands of Alsatians and Lorrainers had flooded into France, and 140,000 French soldiers had died. France's crushing defeat in the most significant European armed conflict between the Napoleonic wars and World War I cast long shadows over military garrisons, meeting halls, and kitchen tables throughout the nation. Until now, no study has adequately addressed the complex, lasting effects of the war on the lives of ordinary French men and women. In this stimulating new book, Rachel Chrastil provides a lively history of French provincial citizens after the Franco-Prussian War as they came to terms with defeat and began to prepare themselves for a seemingly inevitable future conflict. Chrastil provides the first examination of the problems facing provincial France following the war and the negotiations between the state and citizen organizations over the best ways to resolve these issues. She also reinterprets postwar commemorative practices as an aspect of civil society, rather than as an issue of collective memory. By the 1880s, Chrastil shows, the Franco-Prussian War had receded far enough into the past for French citizens to reassess their roles during the war and reorient themselves toward the future. Believing that they had failed in their duties during the Franco-Prussian War, many French men and women argued that citizens could and should take responsibility for the nation's war effort, even before hostilities began. To this end, they joined the Red Cross, gymnastics clubs, and commemorative organizations like the Souvenir Français, especially in areas of the country that had faced occupation and that anticipated future invasion. Using extensive archival and published sources, Chrastil deftly traces the evolution of these private or semiprivate associations and the ways in which those associations affected the relationship of citizens with the French state. Through a novel interpretation of these civilian groups, Chrastil asserts that the associations encouraged French citizens to accept and even to prolong World War I.

The Gaullist regime in France has aroused much interest in the nature of French politics. This stimulating analysis of the conservative faction in France, revised by the author to include the government of General de Gaulle, should be of interest not only to students of that country's history and politics but also to general readers who would understand France's political tradition and where de Gaulle fits into it. This work is translated from the second and revised edition of La Droite en France: de le Première Restauration á la Ve République, published in Paris in 1963.