Mapping a New Kind of European Boundary: The Language Border between Modern France and Germany

During the nineteenth century, Europeans became fascinated with the idea of locating and mapping the borders between their languages. The barrier of language offered a new way of seeing, dividing and organizing European land according to cultural differences. The cartographic techniques that Europeans invented to map their language borders involved a combination of linguistic surveys, on-site observations and collaboration with locals. Once printed, language maps found a broad public audience and helped to structure debates over cultural identity in European borderlands. This article explores the nationalist and regionalist motivations behind linguistic map making along the French-German border, one of the most disputed in modern European history.