Borderland cartographies: Mapping the lands between France and Germany, 1860--1940

Focusing on maps of contested Alsace-Lorraine from 1860 to 1940, this dissertation explores the deep interconnections between the visualization of land and the development of national, regional and local identities in modern Europe. Arguing against the view that European map-making was the exclusive "science of the princes," conceived primarily as an instrument of state rule, this study demonstrates that maps became democratic thinking tools for members of European society to challenge top-down constructions of territory from below. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Alsace-Lorraine became a laboratory for linguists, ethnographers, geographers, anthropologists and historians from France and Germany to conceptualize new forms of culturally based national boundaries. Though publicly generated boundary maps were not endowed with a legal status, they served as powerful rhetorical devices for staking national claims to Alsace-Lorraine. In addition to gaining popularity among educated elites and social scientists in modern France and Germany, map-making also became an important means for ordinary Alsatians and Lorrainers to make sense of their place within their constantly shifting political order "Vernacular" or "daily use" maps guided ordinary Alsatians and Lorrainers through direct, sensory experiences of their surrounding environments, helping them to forge a mental connection between familiar spaces and the abstract concepts of the nation and the region. The purpose of this study is therefore to show that maps were not mere illustrations of historical change in modern Europe; they were agents of historical change that reshaped how people saw, moved through, and experienced the world around them Bringing scholarship on comparative nationalism and border studies in dialogue with visual culture, this is the first study to analyze the politics and identity of a European borderland through the narrative of map-making.