The French army was humiliated by the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, then shaken by the Paris Commune uprising.

ECONOMIST: The Dreyfus affair

Would the border region of Alsace-Lorraine, with its rich seams of coal, again be fought over as European nations struggled to control a key commodity, coal to produce electricity, needed for a war-making machine?

FORBES: Leadership

Overtaken by Germany when it won the Franco-Prussian war in 1871, Alsace and a good part of Lorraine sent streams of refugees to Nancy, whose population nearly doubled in the last quarter of the 19th century.

ECONOMIST: Decorative arts