부산대학교 도서관

What role, if any, did colonialism play in the history of Europe? To answer this question, scholars have increasingly turned to European border regions. These regions, whose ownership was disputed and often unstable, are excellent case studies for patterns of quasi-colonial rule within the confines of Europe. Historians of Austria-Hungary, especially, have argued that colonialism was by no means limited to overseas territories, but pertained also to the European continent. The occupied territories of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a border region on the fringes of the collapsing Ottoman empire, is one example. This article applies the criteria of postcolonial scholars to another European border region: Alsace-Lorraine. In its constitutional, administrative, economic and cultural status, this Franco-German borderland exhibits many characteristics of quasi-colonial rule that also applied in Bosnia-Herzegovina. But there are also important differences. In extending the question of inner-European colonialism from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Alsace-Lorraine, this article reflects on the applicability of a post-colonial perspective onto European border regions more generally. Such a perspective, it will be shown, has its merits as well as its risks. The emerging differences between quasi-colonial border regions like Bosnia-Herzegovina and Alsace-Lorraine, and overseas territories, are a testimony to the complexity and dynamism of colonialism. It is important not to preclude European border regions from postcolonial discourse on account of their geography alone.