La plus petite communaute imaginee du monde Moresnet et la transformation dun territoire conteste en nation

This article proposes to study the different mutations of the particular Moresnet-Neutral territory. It is located near Aachen, where it was established from the Treaty of Vienna of 1815 to the Treaty of Versailles of 1919; and it was under the joint sovereignty of the Netherlands (then of Belgium from 1831 to 1839) and of Prussia (which became Germany in 1870). The process of the nation-state transformed the village of Moresnet, then disputed territory, into a simulacrum of independent state: the smallest imagined community. Perceived from the outside, especially from the press, the village is described as the smallest state in the world, often artificially. This materializes with the construction of a discourse around the status of Moresnet (creation of regalia and rhetoric of the nation). The question of languages is central because of the project of an Esperantist state. Its descriptions and studies by contemporary observers call upon ancient sociological codes (the Lumières for example) or newer ones. The analytical structures transmitted by the great sociologists on the State, Nation, Civilization or Utopia allow us to take a fresh look at this territory, which is undoubtedly a sociological object, whose analysis of the elements of language and of Linguistics helps illuminate the imaginary dimension.