Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations used in footnotes
- Preface
- Introduction: How do we define modern police?
- 1 Five national police styles in response to popular unrest in the nineteenth century
- 2 Modern police and the conduct of foreign policy. The French police and the recovery of France after 1871
- 3 International police collaboration from the 1870s to 1914 Professional contacts between police administrations
- 4 War and revolution, 1914–1922
- 5 The threat of totalitarianism. Nazi Germany's bid for European hegemony
- Epilogue
- List of archival files consulted
- Index
2 - Modern police and the conduct of foreign policy. The French police and the recovery of France after 1871
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations used in footnotes
- Preface
- Introduction: How do we define modern police?
- 1 Five national police styles in response to popular unrest in the nineteenth century
- 2 Modern police and the conduct of foreign policy. The French police and the recovery of France after 1871
- 3 International police collaboration from the 1870s to 1914 Professional contacts between police administrations
- 4 War and revolution, 1914–1922
- 5 The threat of totalitarianism. Nazi Germany's bid for European hegemony
- Epilogue
- List of archival files consulted
- Index
Summary
Foreign responses to the French debacle and the Paris Commune
As a small neutral country closely situated to the military operations in 1870–1, Switzerland reacted with greater sensitivity to the political and social implications of the war than von Moltke. While the federal government anxiously clung to a policy of neutrality, the citizens of Basel, Zurich, and Berne, moved by sympathy for the French people, privately organized the evacuation of several thousand noncombatants from beleaguered Strasbourg – with the consent of the commander of the German siege army, General von Werder, we might add. Other Swiss citizens, long resident in France, petitioned the Berne government for permission to help the French war effort by joining the national guard. But because the Berne authorities forbade the enlistment even in such local forces (whose primary task was order-policing), Swiss citizens in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, and Le Havre set up ambulance services and fire brigades, and some joined the national guard in defiance of their government. The Swiss volunteers were not alone in demonstrating sympathy for France. There were also young Americans serving in the Legion Franco-americaine and some 16, 000 Italians, Hanoverians, and Hungarians fought the Prussians under the command of Giuseppe Garibaldi.
The politicians in Berne manifested a more calculating attitude than their private compatriots, with a hint even of satisfaction at the humiliation currently suffered by France. This at least is the impression conveyed by various letters which were addressed by the political department, and in one instance by the Swiss president himself, to Swiss nationals living in France.
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- The Rise of Modern Police and the European State System from Metternich to the Second World War , pp. 83 - 150Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992