An interview with Historian Christopher Tozzi on the experience of foreign soldiers in the French Revolutionary Army. Focusing initially on the experience of foreign troops during the Old Regime, this episode also covers the hostile treatment of non-citizen soldiers during the revolutionary era. In addition to discussing Swiss, German and Irish soldiers, the interview also explores the experiences of American, Black and Jewish soldiers in the french revolutionary wars.
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For more information on Dr Tozzi’s work:
Books
– Nationalizing France’s Army: Foreign, Black and Jewish Troops in the French Military, 1715-1831 (University of Virginia Press, 2016). Manuscript awarded 2014 Walker Cowen Memorial Prize.
– For Fun and Profit: A History of the Free and Open-Source Software Revolution (MIT Press, 2017).
– “Revolutionary until the Peace”: War and Political Culture in France, 1789-1815. In progress.
Articles
– “Soldiers without a Country: Foreign Veterans in the Transition from Empire to Restoration,” The Journal of Military History 80, no. 1 (2016): 93-120.
– “Les troupes étrangères, l’idéologie révolutionnaire et l’état sous l’Assemblée constituante,” Histoire, économie & société 33, no. 3 (2014): 52-65. Commissioned article for a special edition of the journal on “Les premières années de la Révolution française,” ed. Rafe Blaufarb and Michel Figeac.
– “Jews, Soldiering and Citizenship in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France,” The Journal of Modern History 85, no. 2 (2014): 233-257.
– “Between Two Republics: American Military Volunteers in Revolutionary France,” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 39 (2013): 166-176.
