In the original dust jacket. Black cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

We provide an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available. 

•  Note: This book carries a £5.00 discount to those that subscribe to the F.B.A. mailing list

Please view our photographs and read the rubric on the inside of the dust jacket. Defeatists and Their Enemies: Political Invective in France 1914–1918 explores the intense socio-political friction on the French home front during the First World War. Initially, France entered the war under the Union sacrée (Sacred Union)—a political truce in which left-wing, right-wing, and religious factions agreed to freeze their long-standing conflicts to present a unified face against Germany. However, as the conflict dragged into years of devastating trench warfare, horrific casualties, and economic strain, this domestic peace fractured. By 1917, military mutinies, civilian strikes, and widespread war weariness threatened national stability. 

Core Themes

Catherine Slater uses lexicology and discourse analysis to examine how political language became weaponized during this crisis:

• The Invention of “Defeatism”: The book charts the evolution of the term défaitisme. Originally a minor linguistic import from the Russian revolutionary lexicon, it was rapidly adopted by French nationalists to brand anyone advocating for a negotiated peace as a literal traitor. 
• The “Internal Enemy” vs. Jusqu’au-boutistes: It highlights the toxic polarity between the jusqu’au-boutistes (those determined to fight “until the very end”) and those they accused of subverting the war effort from within. 
• Linguistic Warfare in the Press: Slater tracks how mainstream journals, nationalist sheets (like Léon Daudet and Charles Maurras’s L’Action Française), and satirical papers (like Le Canard Enchaîné) utilized political invective to shape public morale and target high-profile figures—culminating in the treason trials of politicians like Joseph Caillaux and Louis Malvy. 

Current Price & Market Value

Because this academic study was published by [Oxford University Press](https://global.oup.com/ academic-books) in 1981 and has long been out of print, copies are scarce and primarily traded in the used and rare book markets. Depending on the exact condition of the cloth cover and the dust jacket, other vintage, independent copies across platforms like AbeBooks typically range from £15.00 to £35.00, making this copy in “Good” condition highly typical of this market value.