On the border: Cultures, immigration, and the struggle for identity in fin-de-siecle France

This dissertation, On the Border: Cultures, Immigration, and the Struggle for Identity in Fin-de-Siecle France, focuses on the emergence of France's Mediterranean south as a symbol of ambivalent cultural exchange and regional difference from 1871 to 1914. As tensions over the integrity of France's territorial borders rose in the wake of her defeat by Prussia in 1871, Provence and the southern coast were singled out as being particularly exposed to foreign influences, specifically the throngs of elite tourists arriving to take advantage of the region's growing reputation as an exclusive destination on the emerging European tourist circuit and the legions of poor Italian immigrants drawn to the economic and political opportunities in France. This project argues that the highly visible presence of foreigners---both elite tourists and poor immigrants---in France's southernmost region caused the region to emerge as a kind of lightning rod in public debates and private musings about what it meant to be French. By focusing on the impact foreigners had on a regional cultural politics that was itself deeply enmeshed in larger national debates about the health and future of the French nation, this project explores how specific intellectuals, artists, political and racial theorists, immigrant workers, labor organizers, and tourists all trained their gaze upon a region increasingly defined by its perceived difference from the greater French nation---a difference that had ambivalent implications for the hexagon as a whole. Blending the methods of cultural, social, and intellectual history, this dissertation captures the contrasting views of France's Mediterranean south that emerged during this time: as at once a last reserve of cultural unity and purity and as an avatar for the kind of cultural dissolution that seemed to plague the nation as a whole. The intermingling of regional, national, and international interests brought concerns about the definition of French identity, about national and cultural difference, squarely within France's borders. Such concerns would plague France and other Western European countries throughout the great waves of immigration of the twentieth-century and continue to be debated in this age of the European Union and globalization.