At its height, the Napoleonic Empire brought more than 70 million Europeans under the French yoke, with 44 million ruled directly from Paris. Few amongst these populations spoke French. Within the historical borders of France itself, the majority used German , Flemish , Breton , Catalan, the Occitan languages of the South and the langue dâoĂŻl varieties of the North in everyday life, a situation that persisted throughout the nineteenth century. They were joined by the substantial blocs of German, Italian, Dutch and Flemish speakers who inhabited the so-called dĂ©partements rĂ©unis in the Rhineland , the Netherlands and northern Italy that were annexed directly to France. This book is about the efforts of the Napoleonic state to impose cultural homogeneity on the diverse populations within its borders. It is also, and centrally, about how these populations, or at least those elites that engaged directly with the Napoleonic state, adapted to the demands of the centre. In describing this head on collision between an Imperial project bent on cultural unity and populations distinguished by their linguistic otherness, it also provides a case study with broader historical and political import regarding the response of subject populations to state-driven linguistic imperialism .
The linguistic diversity of the French population first became an object of serious political concern, if not to say a source of full-blown moral panic, at the height of the Revolution. The French monarchy of the Ancien rĂ©gime had concerned itself above all with the language of legal practice and administration, crucially displacing Latin from these prestigious written functions with the Villers-CotterĂȘts ordinance of 1539. 1 Yet it was only during the Revolution that, as David Bell has argued, French nationalism emerged as a coherently articulated project, and the culture and language spoken by ordinary folk became significant. 2 The new political culture that emerged in 1789 held that sovereignty rested with the citizens of the French nation. It was therefore a problem that so few ordinary Frenchmen (for political rights were denied to women for the duration of the Revolution) could understand the language of the constitution and the laws drafted in their name.
Initially, the National Assembly adopted a policy of translation , and an office was established to begin the work of translating laws and decrees from French into the other languages spoken throughout the country. 3 Some members of the National Assembly favoured a more radical approach to the other languages of France. In summer 1790, the AbbĂ© Henri GrĂ©goire began soliciting responses to his series of 43 questions on the languages in use across France. GrĂ©goire asked his correspondents to describe both the nature of the language spoken by the people in a given area, and whether French was used in education or in church. The questionnaire was printed in Jacques Pierre Brissotâs journal, Le Patriote Français, and GrĂ©goire also gathered responses from personal contacts and from regional branches of the Jacobin club. 4 This information revealed the French populationâs alarming ignorance of the national language, and spurred GrĂ©goire to call for the annihilation of the so called patoisâa pejorative term for the dialects and regional languages of France. For GrĂ©goire, this project had a democratic and universalising aspect. Not only would knowledge of the French language enable all Frenchmen to participate in the political sphere, to hold office and to scrutinise law, it would also regenerate French society by banishing superstition and ignorance. 5 As GrĂ©goire told the Convention in 1794, âit is above all the ignorance of the national idiom which holds so many individuals at a great distance from truth: however, if you do not put them in direct communication with men and books, their errors, accumulated, rooted for centuries, will be indestructibleâ. 6
It was foreign war and internal revolt in the West and South of France that gave urgency to this more aggressive stance on language. The Revolutionaries feared that linguistic diversity could tip easily into political disunity. German-speaking populations on the border who shared a language with the foreign enemies of the Republic appeared from Paris as a dangerous fifth column, while the Revolutionaries expected counter-revolutionary agents to manipulate ignorant patois-speaking peasants into sedition. The vituperative rhetoric of Bertrand BarĂšre , a member of the Committee of Public Safety, articulated precisely this brand of paranoia in a speech given to the Convention five months before GrĂ©goireâs: âFederalism and superstition speak Breton ; emigration and hatred of the Republic speak German, Counter-Revolution speaks Italian and fanaticism speaks Basque . Let us smash these instruments of shame and errorâ. 7 There followed a short-lived period of âlinguistic terrorismâ, during which time the Convention ended the policy of translating decrees into the regional languages of France, and required a French language teacher to be employed in every Breton-, Italian-, German-, Flemish - and Basque-speaking commune. All legal acts were also now to be written in French, a provision that engendered significant opposition in areas such as Alsace. 8
The Napoleonic period was a less febrile context than Paris in the Year II, but linguistic unification remained an explicit aim of policy under Napoleon. The majority of such efforts were directed towards the speakers of the other standardised languages spoken within the EmpireâGerman , Italian and Dutch âand were transparently aimed at securing French as the language of literate, elite communication. The regime sought to establish French as the official language of legal practice across the Empire, although the need to compromise with local elites frequently militated against the rigid application of the general rule. Similarly, a command of French became a requirement for those seeking to take up a number of official positions within the French state. All newly appointed foresters had to be capable of drafting their reports in French, even if those already appointed were granted repeated exemptions from this requirement. 9 French became a requisite for those seeking to take up positions teachers, even if efforts to enforce this measure proved difficult where local elites were committed to another language.
While it was the speakers of standardised languages like German and Italian that induced the greatest anxiety within the Napoleonic regime, other linguistic minorities were also considered a threat to national cohesion and thus became the target of efforts aimed at francisation. The Jewish communities of western Europe enjoyed unprecedented freedoms under Napoleon , but state protection brought with it a dirigiste religious policy. The state policed religious institutions and appointments, and, much as with the appointment of foresters, a deadline for the appointment of francophone rabbis was fixed in the December 1806 religious statutes for the Jewish faith. 10 While the speakers of regional languages were not targeted directly by legislation from the centre, state actors at the departmental level actively pursued the linguistic reform of the populations they administered. In November 1807, the Society of Emulation, a group sponsored by the departmental administration of the Hautes-Alpes, offered a prize of 300 francs for the best dictionary of âvicious phrases or expressions, used in the department of the Hautes-Alpes, whether contrary to the French language or pronunciation, with the corrections of these same errorsâ. The work was intended to âprotect the young and the less educated against the common vices of speechâ. 11 The members of the Society were, in their own words, committed to the âameliorationâ of the department, and correcting the language of those they administered was the crucial first step. 12
Napoleonic measures related to language reflected a broader discourse of âsocial progressâ and âgood administrationâ that was frequently articulated by the governing elites of France throughout the nineteenth century, not least during the Napoleonic period when the issue of the stateâs role in regulating and improving society was a prominent concern. 13 In the words of Michael Broers, the ideal Napoleonic administrator saw himself âin the vanguard of modernity, [âŠ] determined to impose cultural, administrative and political uniformity on French societyâ. 14 This follows a reconsideration of the Napoleonic Empire and its wider significance for the history of modern Europe over the past thirty years. Stuart Woolfâs work on Napoleonâs integration of Europe rein...