In the wake of Napoleon's defeat in 1815, French liberals set out to create an informal empire. Their efforts to cultivate unequal partnerships with Christian, Greek-speaking elites in southeast Europe shaped national identities and structured global civilizational hierarchies over the decades that followed. Unintended Nations tracks a notion of civilization that developed in early nineteenth-century France. Alex Tipei explores the constellation of ideas, beliefs, and practices this concept invoked - what she calls civilization-speak - and charts the cross-continental networks that employed it as an organizing principle. Drawing on archival and printed primary sources in six languages, Tipei maps out the uses of this civilization-speak on both sides of the continent, focusing on France and the lands that make up significant parts of present-day Greece and Romania. She shows how and why French liberals mobilized civilization-speak to, offering an innovative analysis of liberalism and capitalism's relationship to informal empire. Calling into question long-standing assumptions about the rise of nationalism in southeast Europe, Unintended Nations explores how Franco-Balkan exchanges helped define political, civilizational, and biopolitical boundaries in the post-Napoleonic era.
ISBN: | 9780228024583 |
Publication date: | 12th August 2025 |
Author: | Alex R Tipei |
Publisher: | McGill-Queen's University Press |
Format: | Hardback |
Pagination: | 392 pages |
Series: | McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Ideas |
Genres: |
General and world history European history History and Archaeology |