The French Revolution and the New Spatial Format for Empire: A Nation-State with Imperial Extensions

Abstract

Both global history and the new imperial history identify an emerging convergence of spatial formats, practices, and knowledge for organizing societies during the nineteenth century, though each emphasizes different competitive formats: the territorializing nation-state and the enduring empire. Rather than contrasting empire and nation-state, this article takes their combination seriously through the example of the respatialization of the French Empire during the Revolution and the reorganization of domestic territory into departments. The history of departmentalization underscores the emerging and changing interrelationships between nation and empire. The territorialization of metropolitan France, which developed out of imperial and transregional exchanges, was emblematic of the new type of empire that became a prevailing model for societal organization in the nineteenth century: the nation-state with imperial extensions.

Biographical Note

Megan Maruschke (University Duisburg Essen, Germany)

Originally from the US, Megan Maruschke came to Leipzig in 2010 to join the Erasmus Mundus MA Programme “Global Studies – A European Perspective”. She also studied in Italy and Poland. In 2012, she started her PhD research at Leipzig within the Research Training Group (GK 1261): “Critical Junctures of Globalization”. She wrote her dissertation on the history of free port and free trade zone practices since the mid-nineteenth century in Mumbai, India. Her current research deals with the way in which the French Revolution challenged concepts of space in the Americas.