Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical and empirical background to the study of long-distance Tunisian activism as well as the guiding questions on which the book rests: What were the conditions that enabled Tunisian politics in France? How do we explain what it meant to oppose or support an authoritarian regime from afar in terms of reconfiguring this activism in a migratory context? The chapter begins by discussing the choice to examine the Tunisian case in France and situates the study as part of the broader political, economic and migratory relationships between the two countries. The chapter then presents the theoretical framework underlying that universe of political practice, namely ‘the trans-state space of mobilisation’, which I locate at the intersection of scholarship on North African politics, social movements and diaspora politics. It concludes by outlining the issues involved in undertaking fieldwork in the wake of the 2011 Revolution and introduces the material on which this book draws.

Chapter 1 introduces the problems to which this book responds and proposes alternative pathways for understanding the archaeology of the Roman Empire. It shows how particular colonial ways-of-knowing continue to shape the stories told of North Africa’s people and their traditions of worship under the Roman Empire, setting these within the binary of “Romanization” or “resistance.” While approaches to the archaeology of other parts of the Roman Empire have begun to embrace New Materialism as a way of moving beyond “Romanization,” this chapter argues that semiotic approaches offer a more productive means of engaging with and explaining the material dimensions of imperial hegemony.

The radical Right has turned to the Left’s iconic hero Antonio Gramsci for inspiration and guidance on how to launch a counter-hegemonic struggle against liberal cultural and political domination. Gramsci provides a powerful way to understand the globalisation of the Right, and many of Gramsci’s ideas, particularly cultural hegemony, historic blocs, and counter-hegemonic movements have been self-consciously and strategically appropriated by the Right. What radical Right intellectuals call ‘metapolitics’ provides them with a global sociological, ideological, and political framing, as well as a political economy with capitalism and class at its centre. It provides a strategic direction that seeks to mobilise social forces produced and marginalised by liberalism and globalisation by bringing them to self-consciousness, turning them from classes in themselves to politically aware and active classes for themselves. The global Right is not ideologically unified, nor does it have centralised controlling institutions. Instead, their counter-hegemonic ideologies enable diverse actors and agendas to find common cause despite their differences.

Not only money crossed the ocean: letters between the French orphans and their benefactors went in each direction across the Atlantic. The correspondence between France’s orphans supported through the FCFS and their American benefactors revealed both the power of the connection and the power dynamic between the recipients and the “godparents.” Letters from the fatherless children of France told of the moral and psychological support that accompanied the financial assistance that sponsorships provided. And while it seems that the correspondence helped open an ocean of hope and fostered the conviction that France was not alone in its fight against Germany, the letters from France also reflected the power dynamic of the sponsorship: those in need had to keep the assistance coming. The letters also show the FCFS at work: the instructions to the recipients of aid as to how they were to communicate with donors; the typed transcription and translations of the letters, most likely carried out by women in the Paris and New York offices; and the messaging to the benefactors, who were reminded that mothers needed money, but children cared more for the attention from a far-away friend.

Ensuring the future of France – its children – meant fighting on multiple dimensions. One set of enemies included infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis and the influenza pandemic; the other set comprises illnesses and infant mortality attendant to poverty and malnutrition. Thousands of volunteers from the United States fought these battles with treatment and prevention strategies. They toured the Franco-American colonies, organized large antiepidemic campaigns, and produced leaflets providing practical advice on managing the care of babies and children during wartime. With the help of the Children’s Bureau of the American Red Cross, the American Commission for the Prevention of Tuberculosis in France, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Division, thousands of leaflets were distributed to the Franco-American colonies of the CFAPCF, fatherless children supported through the FCFS, as well as to schools and mothers across France. With the spread of tuberculosis in 1917 and the 1918 influenza pandemic, American medical experts realized that a sanitary ironclad was needed to block the spread of contagious diseases to the United States: to protect France was to protect the United States.

The chapter focuses on the influence of French cuisine in Britain. The innovations of French courtly cuisine were frequently mocked in Britain which had its own tradition of sound and economical country house cooking. The Industrial Revolution brought a loss of cooking skills among the urban poor. The affluent benefitted from the flight of French chefs after the French Revolution, leading to the culinary pretensions of the (equally mocked) Regency period. French chefs set up French restaurants and cooking schools, popularising French cuisine, thus influencing the tastes of the middle classes and stimulating a range of gastronomical writings. Examples from Antony Trollope’s Vanity Fair, Virgina Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, Mike Leigh’s Life is Sweet, Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, the Wife and Her Lover and Elizabeth David’s postwar books serve to gauge the extent of French infuence and help define what makes British food, British.

As soon as World War I broke out, American citizens established an important wartime relief organization that was effective in providing refuge to child war victims from France’s northern and eastern regions. The Committee Franco-American for the Protection of the Children of the Frontier (CFAPCF), the first Franco-American response aimed at ensuring the protection of France’s children, provided financial and material assistance to rescue, shelter, heal, and educate displaced, injured, ill, and orphaned children. It collaborated with groups of nuns who ran some of the colonies, with teachers in charge of schooling and with American health experts overseeing provisions of sanitary conditions and hygiene. American women traveled to France and worked in the Franco-American colonies. In addition to caring for the children, they taught them about their friendly nation whose people were helping to ensure their survival. Running a network of colonies across France required considerable human and material resources, and the CFAPCF drew on social networks of wealthy French citizens and American expatriates eager to shield France’s children from hunger, destitution, and death. Shipments of clothing, garments, books, toys, and other gifts from the United States signaled the Americans’ mobilization to save France’s orphans.

In the aftermath of the war, a new form of commemoration and memorialization took place, centered around the adoption of fatherless children as a substitute to the loss of a son. French orphans were part of a process merging remembrance and humanitarian action. In vast cemeteries across France, the sacrifice of American soldiers was honored on special occasions, with the sponsored orphans and school children placing wreaths of flowers on their tombs. In parallel, the FCFS launched another campaign of sponsorships to reduce infant mortality. With its local branches across the United States, the FCFS capitalized on its ability to reach out to local communities and thus staved off the indifference that can set in after a crisis has seemed to pass. With its other communication strategies still in place, the FCFS saw continued success, testament to its deep popularity across the United States. Between the end of 1918 and 1921, the response of the United States was such that the number of sponsored orphans increased from 80,000 to 300,000.

In December 1916, in the winter snow of New York State, while Americans busied themselves with Christmas shopping and prepared festivities, a skinny twelve-year-old boy, poorly dressed and in ragged shoes, shouted at the top of his lungs: “Buy a Mirror fer a kid in France!” Every evening after school, James Prendergast Jackson Jr. stood on a street corner and sold copies of the newspaper to earn enough money to sponsor a French child whose father had been killed in the war in France. One of six children in a working-class family, James was determined to assist a child across the ocean who, as he had learned in school, desperately needed food and clothing. Ten cents each day would secure those necessities, and James promised himself he would get those 10 cents selling newspapers. He sold seventy copies of the paper a day, for which he earned 35 cents. From Greenville, New York, James wrote to the secretary of the Junior Committee of the Fatherless Children of France Society (FCFS) – the Franco-American organization matching American “godparents” with French children whose fathers had been killed in the war – and announced his intention of “adopting” a brother in France. With candor and determination, James announced his choice of child to support with his earnings: “I wood like a boy between ten and twelve if it is the same to you.” Attached to the letter was 85 cents that he had been given for his birthday. James was assigned André Leblanc, aged eleven, rue Dautancourt, Paris.

No foreign humanitarian organization garnered more support from Americans during (and after) World War I than did the Fatherless Children of France Society. From New York City, the Franco-American private philanthropic organization rapidly raised a wave of humanitarian response for the children of France’s war dead, doing so through strategic communication and tireless networking. Members of the FCFS toured US cities, states, and territories, opening chapters and addressing assembled crowds, constantly collecting funds. Speakers vividly described the plight of starving babies in devastated France and invited those who had witnessed the trauma of children to testify. Much of the campaigning was done by women representing local committees. Americans were offered a choice on how to spend their humanitarian dollars. From the moment they became sponsors, they could be involved in the process of selecting their orphans. Most importantly, the FCFS reached the wealthy, middle, and working classes alike. In involving school children, laborers, and members of churches, clubs, and associations, the FCFS encouraged a spirit of cooperative – and sometimes competitive – humanitarianism. As a result, the FCFS mobilized large sections of US society to “adopt” some 300,000 French children who were victims of war and kept the aid flowing from 1915 to 1921.

After Germany’s capitulation and surrender in November 1918, physicians, nurses, and health care experts crossed the former front lines and realized that four years of malnutrition had significantly affected children’s health and physical development. Milk, butter, eggs, potatoes, and fresh vegetables were scarce or available only at prohibitive prices. Americans who saw firsthand the devastation of the formerly occupied regions of northern France committed themselves to feeding and clothing destitute inhabitants. These leaders and visionaries harnessed the compassion, energy, expertise, and generosity of US citizens who were willing to work tirelessly at home and abroad in France to alleviate suffering. The American Committee for Devastated France was not the only postwar initiative formed by Americans to alleviate suffering and restore health and infrastructure in the devastated regions of France. From Jessie Carson’s efforts to create lending libraries with thousands of donated books to the engineering assistance of Harvard University undergraduates in rebuilding French industries to open-air schools, hospitals, and preventoriums (facilities for infants infected with tuberculosis but not with active disease), American individuals and organizations continued the generosity that the United States had shown during the war, even though their country’s leaders were not supporting the resuscitation of their ally.

Travelling and staying on the ‘continent’ has shaped writers’ ideas of Europe and of Britain’s place within Europe; it has also impacted their work and its reception. British writers have crossed the Channel for a multitude of reasons, including health and recreation, education, or the wish to escape from their own country and its conventions and laws. This chapter highlights two periods of high mobility and exchange during times of prolonged peace between Britain and other European powers: the early and mid-Victorian years, and the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Case studies show how writers’ relationship with Europe is marked not only by their Englishness, but always also by personal circumstances: focusing on Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mary Howitt attends to women’s places in Victorian literature; for the contemporary period, Julian Barnes and Adam Thorpe are discussed as well-known commentators on France and French culture. The chapter asks what attracted and continues to attract writers to Europe, and in what ways they and their work relate to European cultures and languages.

Philanthropic organizations generally operate through networks of political and social élites, mobilizing the wealthy and influential. That was no less true during World War I. The colonies established by the CFAPCF were under the direct patronage of wealthy individuals – Americans who donated parts of their fortune and lent their properties to care for and house relatively small groups of children who were victims of the war: ill, injured, or displaced. The FCFS, which provided money directly to war widows caring for their fatherless children, marshaled the empathy and energies of the American public – initially expatriate Americans in France but eventually wide cross-sections of American society – to support some 300,000 children.