Vigilance, Popular Control and Neighborhood Surveillance in Besieged Paris (1589–1591).

This article examines the development and practice of surveillance during the siege of Paris (1589–1591) amid the French Wars of Religion, focusing on how political and social control intensified under the Ultra-Catholic Ligue’s authority. Drawing primarily on judicial archives and municipal records, it highlights the role of ordinary Parisians—especially the bourgeois militia and neighborhood networks—in implementing vigilance through face-to-face monitoring, neighborhood inquiries, and the use of written instruments like passports and registers. The study situates this period as a formative moment in the social construction of surveillance, where traditional communal watchfulness merged with emerging political imperatives to identify enemies and enforce loyalty. It also underscores the limits and complexities of this surveillance regime, noting both its pragmatic adaptations to crisis and its eventual decline with the return of peace and changing urban dynamics.