As the first official history of a secret service, SOE in France (1966) by M. R. D. Foot represented a major departure from the long-standing culture of secrecy that surrounded Britain's intelligence community. Following publication, the book was criticized in France for its treatment of the resistance and its leader, Charles de Gaulle. This reaction was so vituperative that fears surfaced in Whitehall that the government-sanctioned book would be weaponized by de Gaulle, now president of France, to block a second application by the United Kingdom to join the Common Market. This article examines the missteps that were made by officials in charge of the project that put the British government on a collision course with the French downstream. It is argued that, while officials should have concentrated on the book's portrayal of the resistance, they were preoccupied with removing unflattering material about statesmen like Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden. The article examines how officials, to safeguard a second EEC bid, refused to acknowledge their own failings and instead painted Foot as a second-rate historian. It speaks to a fascinating conversation about the dangers of scholars working with the state, which is more powerful and has agendas at odds with academic historians.
Abstract The territorial divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were stable for most of its existence. They were characterized by dualism: in the Kingdom of Poland, territorial divisions and their connection to public institutions were organic; in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, these matters were strictly ordered. Changes appeared in the eighteenth century, when we can observe localized modifications in the network of territories, and during the Partitions period two systematic reforms were passed. The detailed analysis of such changes clearly shows that the ruling class of the Commonwealth was mainly interested in the political aspects of the territorial divisions: the distribution of prestige by the creation of new land offices connected to new territories, and the use of territorial units as constituencies. This second aspect was the main motivation behind the reforms after the First and Second Partitions. The political and election-focused approach to the system of territorial divisions highlights the difference between the Commonwealth and major European states in this period.
