Doctoral Dissertation Research: Cultivating the Nation, Refining Empire: Wine, Sugar, and Nation-building in Guadeloupe and Languedoc, 1880-1910

University Of Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

This comparative study of labor dynamics in the sugar industry in the French colony of Guadeloupe and in the wine industry of southern France (Languedoc) examines the ways that the legalization of work unions by the French state during the Third Republic offered individuals in rural France and in the French colonies a way to combat economic pressures engendered by the globalization of the world economy at the end of the 19th century. Through a careful analysis of primary documents, including union petitions, the investigators will investigate the extent to which unionization and the negotiation between unionized workers and the state played a key role in the development of a French national identity among rural workers. Ultimately, the investigators will question whether unionization served analogous roles in the French metropole and in the French colonies. The investigation ultimately will challenge the widely accepted belief in the social sciences that labor and labor unions were antithetical to the formation of national identity and nationalism in the 19th century.