Unintended Nations : France’s Empire of Civilization, Southeast Europe, and the Post-Napoleonic World

In the wake of Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, French liberals set out to create an informal empire.Their efforts to cultivate unequal partnerships with Christian, Greek-speaking elites in southeast Europe shaped national identities and structured global civilizational hierarchies over the decades that followed. Unintended Nations tracks a notion of civilization that developed in early nineteenth-century France.Alex Tipei explores the constellation of ideas, beliefs, and practices this concept invoked - what she calls civilization-speak - and charts the cross-continental networks that employed it as an organizing principle.Drawing on archival and printed primary sources in six languages, Tipei maps out the uses of this civilization-speak on both sides of the continent, focusing on France and the lands that make up significant parts of present-day Greece and Romania.She shows how and why French liberals mobilized civilization-speak to, offering an innovative analysis of liberalism and capita