Territorial Conquest and the Nationalization of Elite Identities

Territorial conquest is commonly assumed to create national backlash among the conquered population. This paper argues that conquest might actually promote assimilation into the conquering nation, at least among the elite population. I test the argument on Alsace-Lorraine, a region annexed twice by Germany and France between 1850 and 1938. Using novel spatial data on historical book publications to measure revealed identities of local elites and a difference-in-differences design, I find that both conquests caused large linguistic shifts toward the language of the conquering state. This assimilation effect was driven by incentives set from both economic opportunities and discriminatory language policy. Moreover, conquest led to increased regionalist publications, which I argue served as a tool for peripheral elites to advocate regional interests while assimilating into the conquering nation. These findings shed new light on the assumption that conflict hardens identities and improve our understanding of the nexus between nation-building and regionalism.