The view from the border: a comparative study of autonomism in Alsace and the Moselle, 1918–29
This article offers a comparative analysis of the origins and development of autonomism in interwar Alsace and the Moselle. Upon the liberation of the provinces in November 1918, the local populations of Alsace and the Moselle enthusiastically welcomed French troops. For President Raymond Poincare´ this enthusiasm constituted a clear ‘plebiscite’. But, in light of perceived heavy-handedness on the part of the new French rulers, this enthusiasm proved short-lived and rapidly gave way to a widespread malaise. In response to local fears for the preservation of their distinctive social, linguistic and religious traditions, Autonomist organisations emerged to oppose the loss of what they perceived to be the soul and character of Alsace and the Moselle. They rapidly became a pervasive force in local politics, cutting across ideological and class barriers and dividing parties. For the French government, autonomism represented a serious threat to national unity. For local autonomists, however, it represented an attempt to preserve local socio-economic structures and linguistic and cultural practices. The discussion here seeks to reposition autonomism within the context of local politics and to compare the distinct experiences of Alsace and the Moselle in the decade after their return to French rule.
Border regions and identity
This article examines a number of models for the formation of spatial, ‘geo-political’ and ‘geo-cultural’ identities that have emerged since the publication of Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen, and asks how effectively these approaches can be applied to border regions. The article focuses on two contrasting case studies: French Flanders, and the Adriatic port of Trieste and its immediate hinterland. The first is a region located by a relatively stable border on the edge of a ‘historic nation’; the second, until the end of the First World War, was part of a multi-national empire, located at a point where several different cultures and ethnicities met, mingled and, on occasion, violently clashed. Analysis of the contrasting experience of identity formation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Trieste and French Flanders serves not only to highlight both the value and the limitations of various theoretical approaches, but also to emphasise the surprising degree to which peripheral regions can play a pivotal part in shaping the identity of the centre.
Peasant and French: Cultural Contact in Rural France during the Nineteenth Century
1. Introductory positions 2. The French nation and its peasants 3. The landscape in the early nineteenth century 4. Changes in the landscape 5. Gender, places, people 6. The ambiguities of schooling 7. Inside the parish church 8. A new site: electoral politics 9. Conclusion: towards a new rural history.