Transnational Coupling in the Age of Nation Making during the 19th and 20th Centuries

By (author) Nicole Leopoldie

Publication date:

14 February 2023

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781839986208

This work examines and compares courtship and marriage patterns that occurred between France and the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Departing from state-centered studies of marriage law, it draws on the methodologies of transnational history, cultural history, and the history of emotion to show that these unions were part of a broader pattern of the larger cultural love affair between the two societies.

List of Figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction Marriage: National Borders and Personal Spaces; Part I “Trading Titles for Treasure?”: Elite Marriages during the Nineteenth Century; Part II “Paris is Free—and So Are Its Kisses”: Wartime Marriages during the Twentieth Century; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index

Placing the history of courtship between American heiresses and French aristocrats in conversation with the history of wartime unions between American soldiers and French women, this welcome addition to the literature on Franco-American relations offers a fresh take on the particular rituals, emotional registers, and contact zones—from high-society costume balls to Red Cross dances—that facilitated transnational marriages in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries —Brooke L. Blower, author of Becoming Americans in Paris: Transnational Politics and Culture between the World Wars.