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The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800

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The Fall of Communism and the resultant unleashing of repressed nationalism spurred renewed interest in the origins and causes of nationalism. The sudden groundswell of nationalism was as though a manifestation of Albert Camus' quote that "It is a well-known fact that we always recognize our homeland when we are about to lose it." Many historians and sociologists date the origins of nationalism as an ideology, sentiment or social movement to the early years of the 19th Century, but this is a contentious subject, and one which Bells seeks to disprove by utilizing French history as his vehicle. Bell argues the roots of nationalism predate the 19th Century and he posits that the origins of French nationalism dated to the 18th Century era of the ancien regime and nascent efforts at forging French unity and a common national identity.

Bell's premise that the roots of French nationalism predated the French Revolution isn't as shocking as it appears as other historians focusing on France and other countries have advanced similar hypotheses. Bell's argument is bolstered by Lynn Hunt's book "Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution," which argues that the French revolutionaries sought to supplant the trappings and imagery reflecting the ancien regime's national identity with own imagery reflecting republican ideals and a refined sense of national identity. Hunt confirms Bell's argument that French national identity had sufficiently evolved to a point that it warranted a threat to the Revolution and had to be suppressed and eradicated. But Bell is also asking larger questions, such as why the need to create a national identity arose, just as much as he is asking when those efforts began. The close interconnection of king, country, and religion Bell describes was not unique to France, but occurred in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe. The desire of the Catholic Church to counter the Reformation spurred the forging of this national identity, but it was tempered in the aftermath of the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) as the centrality of religion began to wane. As this paradigm shift occurred it was only natural that the political leadership of France sought to consolidate and integrate the various holdings of the kingdom, in the process creating a French citizen out of the disparate ethnic and linguistic groups within its borders. Thus, the ancien regime created the blueprint in how to remake society in the desired image; something later revolutionaries were all too willing to seize upon.

In some respects "The Cult of the Nation" reads like a straightforward chronologically ordered political history, focusing on the political class's efforts at forging a national identity. Yet bell is not seeking to create a meta-narrative, but instead seeks to question what it is that makes a nation a nation. Bell isn't so much arguing the success or failure in creating a French national identity so much as outlining the means utilized in attempting it. As a result, Bell's focus on the process and the outcome rends "The Cult of the Nation" more of a traditional history, albeit one that challenges conventional wisdom on the origin of nationalism. His "great-man" approach and top-down view of political theory and history is distinctly retro, but when you are writing about the creation of national identity by the political apparatus it is hard to avoid this approach. Bell is also silent on the relative merits of the Enlightenment era which spurred the desire for creating a national identity, opting not to acknowledge or enter that debate. Bell however does make a compelling argument on pushing back the origins of nationalism that cannot be denied.

This work, by historian David Bell of Johns Jopkins University, provides a "deep" review of the nature and develpment of French patriotism and nationhood in this period. To put it simply, for Professor Bell there are no simple answers and oftimes one needs to hold onto multicausal explanations for understanding the events of this era. Of particular interest to me is how Bell uses the Jumonville encounter, which occurred in western Pennsylvania, to explain part of the French "gestalt."