Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Enlightenment Era Representations of the Nation
- 3 The Enlightenment Nation as a Site of Practice
- 4 The French Revolution and Napoleonic Inheritance
- 5 The Greek Revolution of 1821
- 6 Revolutions of 1830
- 7 Revolutions of 1848
- 8 Epilogue
- Bibliography
- About the Author
- Index
4 - The French Revolution and Napoleonic Inheritance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Enlightenment Era Representations of the Nation
- 3 The Enlightenment Nation as a Site of Practice
- 4 The French Revolution and Napoleonic Inheritance
- 5 The Greek Revolution of 1821
- 6 Revolutions of 1830
- 7 Revolutions of 1848
- 8 Epilogue
- Bibliography
- About the Author
- Index
Summary
Abstract
The present chapter describes the diverse ways in which claims concerning the nation, its condition, and the means necessary for its ‘regeneration’ entered into the debates and controversies in the years prior to and following the French Revolution. Further attention is given to historiographical problems concerning the degree to which the conflicts and diplomatic affairs of these years served to politicize the cultural revival movements discussed previously or may otherwise be credited as decisive in shaping the national consciousness of the European body politic.
Keywords: French Revolution, Napoleon, Congress of Vienna, Carlsbad Decrees
O my nation! To what degree of debasement you have fallen! Your name, once so respected in Europe […] has fallen into scorn. […] Your glory has disappeared, your laurels have faded. But an invisible hand has stopped you at the edge of the precipice. Eighteenth century! Return to France all its energy; return to it all its virtues.
This pamphlet from 1789 depicts how Enlightenment era ideas and tropes connected with the nation found their way into French political culture and were later articulated in the highly charged atmosphere of the Revolution. As tracts such as the above indicate, the ideas and meanings circulating in contemporary scholarly and lexicographical works were well represented in the intense constitutional debates of the day, the nation being rendered at some points as a linguistic entity and ‘moral’ being, capable of both debasement and regeneration, and at others in its less esoteric guise as a body of people governed by the same laws. Some extended this later point to further assert, following ideas present again in writings of earlier vintage, that the nation was not only a body of people subject to the same laws – it was the very source of the power to make laws and the arbiter of their rectitude. By declaring therefore in his famous manifesto that the ‘third estate’ or commoners were ‘the nation,’ Abbé Sieyès was making a still larger statement on the nature of sovereignty.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Nationalism and Revolution in Europe, 1763–1848 , pp. 79 - 106Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020