a historical region in eastern France, in the basin of the Rhine River. Area, 8,300 sq km. Population, 1,517,000 (1975), mostly Alsatians. The principal city is Strasbourg (Strassburg). The territory of Alsace corresponds to the economic and planning region of the same name, which comprises the departments of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin.
Alsace is an important industrial and agricultural region; in 1975, 35 percent of the economically active population was employed in industry, and 5 percent in agriculture. Potassium salts are mined near Mulhouse (2.3 million tons in 1973). A hydroelectric station is situated on the Rhine.
The chief manufacturing industries are machine building (general machine building and electronics, electrical engineering, and automotive industries), metalworking, and textiles; in 1971 machine building and metalworking accounted for 42 percent of those employed in industry, and textiles for 12 percent. The principal machine-building centers are Strasbourg and Mulhouse, and the main textile centers are Mulhouse and Colmar. Products of the food-processing industry include beer, grape wines, flour, and cheese. Alsace also has petrochemical, tobacco, lumber and paper, glass, and clothing industries.
More than half the value of agricultural output comes from animal husbandry: dairying, swine raising, and poultry farming. The principal crops are wheat, barley, potatoes, sugar beets, hops, tobacco, and feed crops; there are vineyards in the foothills of the Vosges. Part of the population of Alsace—22,600 in 1975—works in the Federal Republic of Germany and in Switzerland.
Historical survey. Alsace, first mentioned in the seventh century, was a duchy in the late seventh century and the first half of the eighth century; it subsequently became part of the Carolingian empire. In 870, as part of eastern Lotharingia (Lorraine), it passed to the East Frankish kingdom. Alsace’s location on the trade routes from Italy to Germany and France caused its cities, beginning in the 12th century, to increase in economic and political importance: many attained self-government, and several were granted imperial status. Cloth-making and wine-making underwent considerable development in the 13th and 14th centuries.
In the 15th and 16th centuries Alsace was an important center of humanism and the Reformation, in large measure because of the rapidly developing printing industry in Strasbourg. In the late 15th century and the 16th, it was the scene of disturbances among the peasantry and the urban lower classes. Under the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, Alsace became part of France, but the imperial cities remained subordinate to the Holy Roman Empire. King Louis XIV of France took ten Alsatian cities in 1673 and Strasbourg in 1681. The Treaty of Ryswick of 1697 recognized Strasbourg and other Alsatian lands as French possessions.
Under the Treaty of Frankfurt of 1871, Alsace and eastern Lorraine, which had been won from France, were ceded to Germany, forming the Reichsland (imperial territory) of Alsace-Lorraine; under the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 they were returned to France. In 1940, Alsace-Lorraine was annexed by fascist Germany, after whose defeat it was again returned to France.