Monsieur Maurras est ici

French Fascism in Franco-American New England

Bibliographic Data

ID10074552
AuthorsC Stewart Doty (corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume32
Issue4
Pages527-538
Publication date1997-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/002200949703200407
OpenAlexW2108510027
LanguageEN
Citations received8

They still tell the story in certain Franco-American circles in New England. Hanging on the office wall of lawyer Elphege Daignault in Woonsocket, Rhode Island in the 1920s was a framed photograph of Charles Maurras, leader of France's principal fascist movement, the Action FranSaise. In those days, Woonsocket had the third-largest French-speaking population in North America, and French was the language of Daignault's office. In addition to being a lawyer, he was also the leader of the Association Canado-Americaine, one of the two most important Franco-American advocacy organizations. One day, his new receptionist greeted a visitor she had never seen before, but whose spitting image she had seen hanging on the wall. With that knowledge she breathlessly announced to her employer, 'Monsieur Maurras est ici' 'Monsieur Maurras is here'. Of course, the receptionist saw someone who resembled Maurras, not Maurras himself. It seems far-fetched that anyone could even imagine him coming to Woonsocket. Yet, Maurras' spirit was very much present in FrancoAmerican New England in the 1920s and 1930s. In those years French fascism held a special attraction for the Franco-American elite of priests, lawyers, doctors and journalists. This article will examine the extent of that attraction, its origins, and its ending at the beginning of the second world war. That there could be a Franco-American elite in New England attracted to the French radical right was the result of the post-American Civil War tidal wave of immigration from Quebec. By the 1920s, over one million descendants of French Canadians lived in the north-east. They constituted the region's major non-English-speaking immigrant group. In such textile and paper-making cities as Cohoes in New York, Chicopee, Lowell, Worcester and Holyoke in Massachusetts, Woonsocket and Central Falls in Rhode Island, Manchester and Nashua in New Hampshire, the mill towns of Connecticut's Quinebaug River Valley, and Biddeford and Lewiston in Maine, they composed up to 60 per cent of the population.' Figures like those alarmed the

Ancient history · Political science · Canadian Identity and History · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History

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