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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2022

From Line on a Map to Realities on the Ground: The French-German Joint Boundary Commission at Work (1871–1877)

Résumé

This contribution focuses on the French-German Boundary Commission that demarcated the French-German border from 1871 to 1877, after the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine that followed the French defeat in the War of 1870. The genesis of this border cannot be summarised by the delineation drawn on the small-scale map attached to the Treaty of Frankfurt at the end of the war. It took no less than seven years for actors to draw the borderline in the field. From 1871 to 1877, a Boundary Commissioncomposed of French and German military and geographic engineers-worked on the ground to make the new border effective. During their activities, they erected more than 5000 border stones, made more than 900 maps and settled numerous conflicts, two of which we focus on. Thanks to the diary of one of the border commissioners and the collections of archives produced by the Commission in France and Germany, we study the birth of a border from a new angle. This study emphasises the room for manoeuvre that these officials had whilst 35 À delimiting the border, as well as the role the 36 À inhabitants played by means of petitions, 37 À letters of protest and counter-mapping. This 38 À French-German case will be put into perspec-39 À tive with other Boundary Commissions 40 À encountered in our research.
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hal-03979461 , version 1 (08-02-2023)

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Benoît Vaillot. From Line on a Map to Realities on the Ground: The French-German Joint Boundary Commission at Work (1871–1877). Beneath the Lines. Historical Geographies of Borders and Boundary Making (18th-20th Centuries), pp.59-72, 2022, 978-3-030-96903-5. ⟨10.1007/978-3-030-96904-2_4⟩. ⟨hal-03979461⟩
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