Subjects, Citizens, and Aliens in a Time of Upheaval: Naturalizing and Denaturalizing in Europe during the First World War

The article deals with the impact of the First World War on the notion and practice of citizenship in France, Britain, Germany, the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and Italy, and on the relationship between these same belligerent states and the people living in their territories— both citizens and aliens. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which, when faced with real or supposed security threats, governments of belligerent European countries not only mobilized populations along the member/ non-member divide but also redrew the boundaries between members and non-members and redefined the path to membership. The studies that have dominated the debate on this issue in the last three decades have not paid much attention to the role played by the war and the revolution in reshaping citizenship laws and practices or have considered it as a side issue. In contrast, the article demonstrates how bringing the war and the revolution back in is essential to overcome the classic distinction between jus soli and jus sanguinis and the sometimes too-Manichean divide between the assimilationist model and the ethnic one.