The French Revolution: Inventing the Political Nation

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The French RevolutionInventing the Political
Nation

• Idea of the Nation
• Nation-Building
• Contests over Citizenship

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Recap of Tuesday

• Nobility vs absolute monarchy
• New context public opinion
• Political crisis made enlightenment revolutionary
  and produced class conflict (see C Lucas, Past
  and Present 60 (1973)

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Sieyes, What is the Third Estate?

• What is a nation? A body of associates living
  under a common law and represented in the same
  legislature.

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Sieyes and Nationalism

• the privileged act no less as the enemies of the
  common order than do the English towards the
  French in wartime
• but all they need is the will to re-join the
  common order

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Idea of the nation

• civic, not ethnic
• clean break with the past
• cult of classical antiquity

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Cult of Antiquity
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Nation-Building Departments

• A new division of the territory must
  ...dissolve the local and particular spirit
  into a national and public spirit it must make
  Frenchmen out of all the inhabitants of this
  empire those who, up until today, have only been
  Provençaux or Normans or Parisians or
  Lotharingians.
• Duquesnoy (deputy), November 1789

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Nation-Building Language

• In order to extirpate all prejudices, develop
  all truths, all talents, and all virtues, to meld
  all citizens into a nation to simplify and
  facilitate political life, there has to be a
  single language.... Linguistic unity is an
  integral part of the Revolution. (Abbé Grégoire)

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Citizenship

• The title of citizen is a new word in our
  language as the ideas for which is stands are new
  in this country. The title of citizen is now your
  glory. (Rabaud de Saint-Etienne, 1789)

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Citizenship rights and duties

• Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
  (1789)
• National Guard
• Military Service (levée en masse, 1793 creation
  of citizen army)

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How universal was citizenship?

• Political rights active and passive citizens
• Two-stage electoral process primary assemblies
  and electoral colleges
• Contest over who speaks for France

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Parallel revolutions

• la grande peur, Aug 1789
• radicalization 1792
• Flight to Varennes
• outbreak of war
• storming of Tuileries, Aug 1792

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What is a Sans-Culotte?