The Rhine Crisis of 1840 and German Nationalism: Chauvinism, Skepticism, and Regional Reception*
The Rhine Crisis began with French imperialism. Aiming to expand its influence to Egypt and the Levant, France lent its support in 1839 to Mehmet Ali, Egypt’s pasha, whose ambition to seek hereditary rule in Egypt and Syria challenged Ottoman suzerainty. After Egyptian-led troops pushed theOttoman army beyond Syria’s border in April 1839, Adolphe Thiers, the French president, envisioned a new sphere of influence in the Orient. He thus played with the fragile equilibrium of the Eastern Question, Western diplomacy’s contest to fill the power vacuum of a reduced Ottoman Empire. The démarche stalled, however, during the opening months of 1840, culminating in dramatic failure on July 15with the London Convention: a four-power treaty ðwithout the consultation of FranceÞ that supported the sultan’s retention of his imperial territories. Isolated and humiliated by this diplomatic loss, Thiers’s government and the Chamber of Deputies sought an honorable retreat through compensation elsewhere and therefore reasserted the claim that France’s frontier extended to the Rhine. The French state thus compounded a diplomatic setback with a political dispute over “natural borders.” In
The Ottoman Empire and Europe from the late Westphalian order to the Crimean system: the ’Eastern Question’ Revisited
The ‘Eastern Question’ is one of the most controversial and persistent subjects in the history of international relations. This article looks at two aspects of the evolution of the relations between the Ottoman Empire and Europe. The first one focuses on the importance of the 18 century in the emergence of the ’Eastern Question’. The second one emphasizes on several episodes that may reopen the debate on the origins of the Crimean War. Our research is an attempt to demonstrate that the ’Eastern Question’ was only a piece of a larger puzzle. The more Russia was influential in world politics, the more her contribution became valuable for the stability of the international system. The idea to challenge in the early 1850’s the heritage of the 18 century in world politics (meaning to marginalize Russia in European affairs), did not serve on the long run neither to the security of the Ottoman Empire, nor to the ’new multilateralism’ put forward by Napoleon III.
The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe
The leading historians who are the authors of this work offer a highly original account of one of the most important transformations in Western culture: the change brought about by the discovery and development of printing in Europe. Focusing primarily on printed matter other than books, The Culture of Print emphasizes the specific and local contexts in which printed materials, such as broadsheets, flysheets, and posters, were used in modern Europe. The authors show that festive, ritual, cultic, civic, and pedagogic uses of print were social activities that involved deciphering texts in a collective way, with those who knew how to read leading those who did not. Only gradually did these collective forms of appropriation give way to a practice of reading--privately, silently, using the eyes alone--that has become common today. This wide-ranging work opens up new historical and methodological perspectives and will become a focal point of debate for historians and sociologists interested in the cultural transformations that accompanied the rise of modern societies. 
 
 Originally published in 1989. 
 
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