Adopting a perspective steeped in borderlands history and historiography, Stephen A. Lazer studies the process by which Alsace became a province of France. Congruent with the insights of William Beik's path-breaking research on French absolutism, Lazer demonstrates that the French crown in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries managed to integrate Alsace into the French realm only through compromise, cooperation, and cooptation. The crown used similar methods throughout the rest of France in the early modern era as it sought to integrate institutionally the various provinces and subject them more fully to royal authority.

Absolutism, as we now know, was not imposed top-down from Paris or Versailles; rather it was an ongoing negotiation, not always between equal partners, but one where center and periphery each had agency in the process. But Alsace had more cards to play than most other regions because the Holy Roman Empire maintained a strong political and cultural presence there and the Alsatians themselves were well aware that the Holy Roman emperors were continually seeking opportunities to undermine French control of the region. Hence, Lazer contends that the French monarchy's sovereignty over Alsace remained contingent throughout the early modern period, based on sharing power with local elites, which allowed the latter to retain much of the autonomy they had enjoyed under imperial rule, and much more than elites enjoyed elsewhere in France. The result was a blended political culture incorporating German and French elements.

The process by which Alsace was absorbed into France was neither easy nor continuous, and success was by no means inevitable. Lazer dissects the process of French state formation in Alsace through a close study of five territories belonging to the dynasty that ruled the state of Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld: the county of Rappolstein (Ribeaupierre), the seigneurie of Bischweiler (Bischwiller), the county of Lützelstein (la Petite Pierre), the seigneurie of Guttenberg, and the Vogtei Kleeburg (Cleebourg). Lazer recognizes that most Alsatians were linked to their French sovereign only through a series of intermediary seigneurial officials, who thus were crucial to the construction of French authority. It was through these territorial lords and the officers they employed to administer their domains that the ongoing renegotiation of the French state in Alsace took place. The officials who played the most important role in mediating between French and local authorities, and between both and the local inhabitants, were the bailiffs (Amtmänner). Bailiffs had a particularly hard job because they had not only to mediate among groups with competing interests, but also to deal with the complexities of a society that linguistically and culturally was both French and German. That so many bailiffs of the Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld territories succeeded is testament to the intelligence and political acuity of these men.

Another source of tension that the bailiffs and the ducal officials of these territories needed to manage was religion, given that the French crown, especially under Louis XIV, was committed to a policy of Catholic dominance, whereas much of the Alsatian population was Protestant. Both the French and the Dukes of Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld were obliged to compromise on the issue. The French had to tolerate Protestant local officials in places where it would have been politically too disruptive to impose Catholic ones, and the reality of bi-confessional communities even as it was attempting to eliminate them in the rest of France. The dukes and their subjects, by contrast, had to accept that over time Catholics would come to dominate the hierarchy of power. Compromises such as these derived from necessity rather than a belief in tolerance or power-sharing.

The dukes and the French king alike needed one another if they were to avoid losing their Alsatian territories to the Holy Roman Empire. The claims of the Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld line to certain of the territories they controlled were weak and contested by other dynasties. It took more than a generation for the dukes to establish their authority and their own loyal clients in Lützelstein and Guttenberg, and the battle over French sovereignty in Kleeburg dragged on until the eve of the French Revolution. Many Alsatians did not accept the legitimacy of French rule and feared that the French ultimately would attempt to impose French language and culture and the Catholic religion. Some Alsatian elites, sensing the weakness of the French position, were willing to collaborate with imperial officials interloping in territories the French claimed. Lazer's research demonstrates how interdependent the dukes and the French crown were. The dukes’ willingness to pay homage to the French king helped to legitimize French sovereignty in the eyes of the Alsatians in the territories the dukes ruled; the support of the French king for the dukes, albeit not always as firm and complete as the dukes would have wished, provided the dukes with resources they needed to cement their rule while bolstering their legitimacy as well.

This thoroughly researched monograph will be of use to scholars of French and German history alike. More contextualization, including a better foregrounding in the pre–Treaty of Westphalia history of Alsace and the history of the competition between the French and imperial crowns over this territory before the seventeenth century, would have made it even stronger. The French had a strategic interest in controlling Alsace, especially as so many French Protestants looked to Strasbourg as a place of refuge and a source of Protestant ministers and literature. Moreover, from the French perspective, Alsace was central to protecting France from invasions from Spain and the German imperial territories, which is why sixteenth-century French rulers began making incursions into Alsace. Nevertheless, State Formation in Early Modern Alsace makes a significant contribution to the study of early modern France, diplomacy, and state formation.