Assimilation, Emigration and Mobilization: Elite Responses to Territorial Conquest

Territorial conquest is commonly assumed to generate backlash among the conquered population. This paper argues instead that responses to annexation can vary between emigration, assimilation, and mobilization. Specific choices depend on each individual's ethnic background and the relative costs of each strategy. 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 linguistic behavior of local intellectual elites, and a difference-in-differences design, I document evidence for all three strategies. First, I find that both conquests caused large shifts toward the language of the conquering state. These shifts were partly driven by the emigration of local authors, but also by systematic linguistic assimilation. Second, conquest promoted the mobilization in the form of regionalist discourse, which served as a tool for elites to advocate local interests while integrating into the conquering state, rather than a secessionist form of identification.