Nobody is asking France to return Alsace-Lorraine, but in a historical article, one might expect at least a footnote to say that this wasn't just French territory! And I don't think the comparison with Texas is all that fitting: this particular territorial dispute goes back almost to the days of Charlemagne, with sovereignty changing numerous times. This isn't so much a case of "It was yours, now it's mine" as of "It was mine, then it was yours, then mine again, then yours again - now we can't really say whose it ought to be, but I still want it".
My point was that, no matter how many times it went back and forth, it had been France for over a hundred years. That's "just French territory" for most reasonable purposes.
(Except this is Europe, where a hundred years is not a particularly long time...)
