Britain and France were at war with each other for over half of the long eighteenth century. This period of sustained conflict produced immense changes, in both countries, in the character of the state and the course of economic development. Yet one of the most obvious ways in which contemporaries would have encountered the war was in the presence of large numbers of prisoners of war held by their country. Early in the century there were thousands of such captives, and by its end they numbered in the tens of thousands. Renaud Morieux takes this neglected topic for the focus of his multifaceted study. These prisoners created challenges that were legal and diplomatic, as well as administrative and financial. The citizens of each country found themselves having to learn to live with captives of a nation with which they were at war. In a work that is both theoretically informed and exhaustively researched, Morieux offers fresh insight into the consequences of war for European society.

Few disputed in this period that prisoners of war deserved treatment different from that endured by the normal prison population. Legal theory and diplomatic custom were unanimous on this point. Indeed, the standard for what constituted humane treatment was becoming more exacting. Morieux shows us, however, that such clear statements were bedevilled by hard cases. What should be done with prisoners taken by privateers? Were Irishmen who fought for France traitors deserving of death? How should slaves under arms be treated? Morieux uses these cases to reveal lessons about the boundaries of national identity within the wider Atlantic world.

In certain respects, prisoners of war enjoyed some benefits that domestic prisoners did not have. Officers had the right to parole, the privilege of finding accommodation outside the walls of the prison. Prisoners of war, at least some of the time, were provided with food and clothing. They could appeal to special agents, either of the state which held them or their own representatives, against abuse or neglect. They benefited from the sensitivity of the authorities to accusations of cruelty that might reflect on national reputation. No doubt the biggest difference between foreign captives and the normal prison population was that the latter knew the length of their term of detention, while the former were subject to the state of hostilities and the rhythm of prisoner exchanges.

Far more striking is the evidence Morieux offers about the actual nature of the confinement the prisoners of war endured, what it says about the reach of the state, and the management of prisons in the eighteenth century. The state might be fighting war on a new scale, mobilizing increasing resources in the conflict, but the task of coping with the captured enemy fell to local officials. ‘For most of the century’, Morieux reports, ‘the exceptional status of the prisoners of war in the law of nations did not translate into specific material conditions of detention’ (p. 197). In both countries, at least until the end of the century, traditional places of confinement housed the majority of captives. The Admiralty or the Sick and Wounded Board might occasionally respond to a complaint, while a philanthropic campaign might address temporary distress, but otherwise local authorities and managers of penal establishments were left to deal with the prisoners. The flood of new prisoners put a strain on local institutions; the remarkable fact is that it did not break them.

In most other respects, the prisoners of war experienced a confinement identical to that endured by domestic convicts. Prisoners mingled together, only distinguished by the special treatment that higher social status or money might secure. Those detained for trial or awaiting punishment, and those confined for debt, interacted daily with the prisoners of war. Prisons were, as well, porous institutions, with numerous economic and social connections to the surrounding community. There were too few guards to maintain effective oversight. Even when the custodians were aided by the militia, the frequent escapes of prisoners of war indicated the laxness of security. Morieux offers examples of friction between guards and prisoners. Yet, as Morieux insists, prisoners were scarcely passive. Extortion and violence on the part of guards might be met with petitioning of the authorities or riot by the prisoners. More typically, as was the case with the domestic prison population, the prison was governed by negotiation and compromise. States might lay down rules for guards and prisoners to observe, but in practice the actual regulation of the prison depended on the ad hoc arrangements made between those who inhabited the establishment.

By the early nineteenth century, this situation began to change, though Morieux is less interested in examining this transition. The last decades of the century, especially in Britain, saw the rise of a movement to transform confinement. The experience of coping with thousands of prisoners of war appears to have had small impact on the demand for reform; the focus of concern was domestic. A central principle of reform thinking was the idea of separation. It identified the evil of existing arrangements as arising in their promiscuous social organization and unregulated nature. The separation of prisoners from the world and from each other, achieved through architecture, would, it was argued, cure the evil. More was expected from confinement; greater control of space was the means to that end. The impulse behind reform was the desire for better social regulation, and it represented part of a campaign against popular illegalities and lower-class disorder. The removal of prisoners of war was a step towards this goal. The prisons at Norman Cross, opened in 1797, and Dartmoor, opened in 1809, represented phases of this programme. For all Morieux's skill in making the experience of confinement for prisoners of war come alive, his work is less useful in helping us understand where this new programme came from or why it proved successful in changing the organization of confinement, if not in eliminating the compromises and shortcomings that had marked the old regime.