New Books In French Studies

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: France’s Empire of Civilization, Southeast Europe, and the Post-Napoleonic World (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2025) tracks a notion of civilization that developed in early nineteenth-century France. Dr. 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, Dr. 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 an