Our Friends the Enemies: The Occupation of France after Napoleon takes as its subject the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars and the transition to an enduring peace. Author Christine Haynes, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, carefully traces the efforts to craft a lasting resolution to the tumult and chaos engendered by a quarter-century of warfare on the European continent. Following Napoleon's return from exile in 1814—a period described as the hundred most expensive days in French history—and his final defeat at Waterloo, the Allied powers sought to craft a permanent peace. The way to ensure future tranquility was through an “occupation of guarantee.” France was divided into various occupation zones, foreign troops were billeted on French soil for a period of three years, a new regime was established, and the French army was largely demobilized. This “unprecedented” solution, Haynes argues, represented nothing less a “new approach to peacekeeping” (39). The larger issue that Haynes's book is situated to address speaks to this question of peacekeeping, and thus it addresses a question of enduring importance: How can organized violence be concluded in ways that disrupt cycles of warfare rather than create the seedbeds for subsequent conflict? While Haynes has weighed in on these topics previously, perhaps most notably as a coeditor of a volume of the Journal of Military History dedicated to the topic of “ending war” (80:1, January 2016), this book contains an intensive investigation of peacekeeping in the wake of the first round of national wars affecting Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Haynes's argument about the practices and significance of post-Napoleonic peacekeeping unfolds over the course of three sections. “Enemies” describes the difficulties of the occupation, focusing on topics such as the devilish complexity of arranging the terms of occupation, the effects of military requisitioning, and the rippling consequences of violence inflicted on civilian population by occupation forces. The second section, “Friends?” details the ways occupation forces and French civilians and authorities sought common ground. Here, Haynes tackles topics like the legal accommodations governing the behavior of occupation troops, the ways that religion shaped relations between the groups, the (consensual) sexual history of occupation, and the sense of cosmopolitanism that developed out of the everyday cross-cultural exchanges—including, incredibly, the history of amusements such as the montagnes russes, early roller coasters whose popularity swept Paris in the period—that formed the spine of the occupation of guarantee. The concluding portion of the book, “Regeneration,” illuminates the process of reconstructing France economically, politically, and socially after the final defeat of Napoleon.

Because Haynes's argument focuses as much on the French as on the occupation forces, readers are treated to a holistic view of the occupation period. We learn as much about the effects of occupation on everyday people and the local notables responsible for ensuring a smooth administration as we do about coalition forces, their leaders, and the political elites seeking ways to initiate a fresh start for France after the traumas of war. This way of explaining the history of occupation—showing readers its effects on both the victorious and the defeated—provides a platform to understand a suite of fascinating historical problems. Dealing with topics as diverse as reparations payments, squabbles over the ownership of horse manure, and the symbolic codes deployed to signal support or rejection of the Restoration, Haynes exposes readers to the range of problems that needed to be solved before occupation forces could be withdrawn and demobilized. When Richelieu was able to secure a promise of evacuation at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, he not only brought an end to the occupation but he also initiated the restoration of French sovereignty.

Haynes's thesis—that the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars represented a novel departure from conquest to pacification and security—is thoughtfully supported by her deeply researched book. The lessons from that time for ours, a period of “forever wars” that percolate along with little hope of meaningful conclusion, are critically important ones. Haynes has a sensitive eye for meaningful archival detail, and she has woven those insights together into a book that can help us better understand one of the most pressing of problems: wars are easy to start, but much more difficult to end. Haynes lets us in on the historical processes that—in this one case, at least—helped prevent future conflict. Readers from many fields, from military history and literary criticism to cultural studies and legal history, will find in Christine Haynes's book a welcome introduction to the question of how conflicts might be resolved in ways that minimize the likelihood of further warfare.