L'Alsace Est-Elle Allemande Ou Française? Réponse A M. Mommsen

After reading La cité antique, I knew I found a new favorite author, so I was researching around the internet for other books he wrote.

This little pamphlet, whose title translates into: Is Alsace German or French? was written during the Franco-Prussian war as a response to some letters to the Italian press written by German historian Theodore Mommsen, which justified the Prussians taking the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine by insisting that the provinces should be a part of Germany due to the race and language of their inhabitants.  Fustel de Coulanges demolishes Mommsen's argument that race and language are what determine nationality and shows how other factors are much more important.  Great reading for those interested in the Franco-Prussian war, the aftermath of the 1866 war of the German League against Prussia, and in the historical events and ideas leading up to World Wars I & II.

For those who don't read French, I translated de Coulanges's text into English and posted it online in blog form.  Feel free to check it out here.  I included links to Fustel de Coulanges's original French text as well as to an English translation of Theodore Mommsen's letters, so you can get both sides of the debate.

La cité antique / The Ancient City

This is a brilliant exposition of the religious beliefs of the ancient Greeks and Romans and how that shaped the way they lived, their ideas, their government, and the culture they developed.  When we think of Greek and Roman religion, we immediately think of gods like Zeus, Athena, Apollo, and Venus and such, but de Coulanges goes even further back than that, to the domestic gods that were the dead ancestors of each family, and that protected only that family and their property so long as the living members of the family faithfully carried out the proper rites and sacrifices and owned the property on which their tombs were located.  Apparently, this ancestor worship was a religion the ancient Greeks and Romans shared with the Hindus and dates back to their common roots before the different groups diverged and migrated out to India and to Europe.  As their beliefs and worldview changed, so did Greco-Roman culture change, giving rise to the Greek and Italian city states that later consolidated into the Roman Empire.  In the last chapter, de Coulanges provides a brief outline of how radically Christianity changed the culture and outlook of the Roman Empire and why it brought an end to the ancient conception of the city.

This book is invaluable for those with an interest in the history of ancient Greece and Rome, those who are planning to read the classics and want to understand the mindset of the authors better, and those who want to see how a religion can shape the culture and civilization of a people. De Coulanges's purpose in writing it was to show how different the worldview of the ancient Greeks and Romans was from our own, to prevent the common mistake of believing the ancients to be too much like ourselves.