Laws of Empire and Nation: Legal Assimilation and Subjugation in Alsace and Lorraine Under French and German Rule, 1852-1939
About
Alsace and Lorraine changed hands between France and Germany three times between 1852 and 1939. These regime changes created overlapping and divided national loyalties among the regions’ inhabitants. In turn, the Second French Empire, the German Empire, and the Third French Republic wielded legal frameworks to subjugate and assimilate the regions – which had distinct local identities, language, culture, and customs – with the respective nation-states.
This project will examine the legal history of Alsace and Lorraine as the regions transitioned between French and German rule. It seeks to understand how both France and Germany used legal policies to further their nationalizing objectives, including how they attempted to suppress local identities and practices in order to promote the language, culture, and national identity of the ruling regime. In doing so, the project will use archival and printed legal sources to identify: which assimilation measures each regime prioritized; the degree of continuity across regimes; how France and Germany addressed issues related to ethnicity, nationality, language, citizenship, and gender; and how local populations responded to such measures.
Law and Empire scholars have used legal sources to study the relationships between imperial powers and their respective colonies. In doing so, they have revealed the crucial role that legal frameworks played in shaping power dynamics, identities, and governance structures within imperial contexts. While this scholarship has yet to focus on continental Europe, Alsace and Lorraine are well-situated for the application of this methodology because the regions were subjected to denigrated legal statuses, not unlike colonial territories, by both France and Germany. In addition to introducing Law and Empire methodology to Alsace and Lorraine, this project will further add to existing scholarship on the regions, legal studies, national identities, and border studies by exploring long-term legal changes across the 19th and early 20th centuries.
