L'Andalousie et Napoléon: Contre-insurrection, collaboration et résistances dans le Midi de l'Espagne, 1808-1812

In the summer of 1808, Andalusia numbered among the major fronts of anti-French insurrection. Yet, from spring 1810 onward, the region would be almost completely pacified, and offered a triumphal welcome to King Joseph. How was such a rapid reversal possible? The historiography of the Spanish War of Independence had, before this publication, offered few responses to this question. By concentrating on the French "counter-guerilla" in this crucial period, Jean-Marc Lafon illuminates the history of the Napoleonic occupation, through this modern concept which consists in fighting a guerilla uprising with its own methods (rapid and targeted actions), rather than through a classic occupation army trained in blind repression which cut it off from civilian populations. According to the author, it is therefore the military leaders on the ground who, distancing themselves from the official doctrines of Napoleon (and even those of King Joseph), set in motion a targeted politics of counter-guerilla, to avoid repeating the errors of the war in the Vendée, which was still in recent memory.