Demographic composition of Franche-Comté and Lorraine without French conquest?

How would the ethnic situation look like by 1800 in Franche-Comté and Lorraine (and Elsas ofcourse), if France wouldn't have conquered them? Would the Franco-German language border be more to the West? What do you think?

I'm asking this to figure out how determined was for the French the view those territories as cores of their nation.
 
How would the ethnic situation look like by 1800 in Franche-Comté and Lorraine (and Elsas ofcourse), if France wouldn't have conquered them? Would the Franco-German language border be more to the West? What do you think?

I'm asking this to figure out how determined was for the French the view those territories as cores of their nation.

The French build around the idea of nation stemming from popular consent, not ethno-linguistic composition.
 
The Franche-Comté and most of Lorraine (but not the northern part, the département of the Moselle) always spoke French or related Gallo-Romance dialects.

It is Alsace and the Moselle that experienced a language shift to French.
 
The Franche-Comté and most of Lorraine (but not the northern part, the département of the Moselle) always spoke French or related Gallo-Romance dialects.

It is Alsace and the Moselle that experienced a language shift to French.
True, but if Lorraine does not become French and ends up being part of a (major) German speaking country, it is possible for the language border to move the other way.
 
True, but if Lorraine does not become French and ends up being part of a (major) German speaking country, it is possible for the language border to move the other way.

Probably not by 1800, though (see the OP). More like the 1900s after the spread of mass education/media.
 
True, but if Lorraine does not become French and ends up being part of a (major) German speaking country, it is possible for the language border to move the other way.

IDK, you do have the Vosges as a formidable natural barrier between Lorraine and Alsace. German settlement beyond it would require some sort of "population engineering".
 
Franche-Comté will, as others have noted, almost certainly be as Francophone as adjoining Swiss cantons.

Lorraine may evolve differently. Although Lorraine over most of its territory was Francophone, the extreme northeast of what is now Moselle department was traditionally populated by speakers of Germanic dialects.

1200px-Dialectes_de_Moselle.svg.png


What will happen depends entirely on what happens to Lorraine? If Lorraine remains a state independent of France and Germany, the Germanic languages might disappear much at Letzeburgisch has in Belgium's Luxembourg province or they might persist. If Lorraine ends up attached to a larger polity, the Germanic languages might persist.
 
You're right. I was only looking east. German can naturally grow further south into the Mosselle Valley.
 
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