France and Germany: Origins of Modern Nationalism (Lecture Notes)

Course context and aims

• Nationalism theme covers the development of nationalism and national identity in what is described as the modern period, from the French and Industrial Revolutions to the beginning of the twenty‑first century.
• Four historical contexts are considered: France and Germany (Lecture 1), Great Britain (Lecture 2), China, and Australia.
• Three overarching elements link the examples:
  • Global forces trigger nationalism; nationalism exists within a global/transnational context.
  • National identity may focus on racial or cultural difference from others (the idea of the other).
  • Modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries intensified nationalism through industrialization, globalization of production, and large-scale population transfers.
• The lecture surveys key debates in nationalism studies to situate this topic historically:
  • Ernest Gellner: modern nation linked to the Industrial Revolution; social homogeneity and cultural standardization; mass education; nationalism emerges in the modern era.
  • Anthony D. Smith: ethnosymbolism; ethnicity anchored in myth of descent, shared memories, ethnic symbolism; nations formed on cultural affinity.
  • Yael Tamir (Yael Tamir): gender and nation; women as symbolic of the nation but often excluded; nationalism as imagined community with gendered dimensions.
  • Benedict Anderson: imagined communities; nations imagined as limited and sovereign; boundaries between real and imagined are blurred; shared language/ethnicity and values define nations; multicultural trends challenge traditional boundaries.
• Post‑World War II optimism and its limits:
  • Yael Tamir notes liberal optimism after 1945: end of wars, reason, growth, and the idea of a liberal global order (Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History”).
  • The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 seemed to confirm liberal democratic capitalism as dominant, yet the early twenty‑first century saw a resurgence of nationalism, with crises in the US, Brexit Britain, Europe, China, and Turkey; nationalism reasserted through movements for limits on immigration and identity politics (e.g., Catalonia, Scotland).
  • Nationhood can be both inclusive and exclusionary; the state’s monopoly on national identity is negotiated with global and regional challenges.
• The lecture emphasizes that nationalism is not an organic product of a single nation’s essence but a political and cultural construction shaped by historians, memory, symbols, and policy.
• Key terms to know: imagined communities, ethnosymbolism, la patrie, Marianne, the other, the nation as a political and cultural project, sovereignty, patrimony.

Core theoretical concepts and definitions

• Nation as imagined community:
  • Benedict Anderson defines the nation as an imagined political community that is both limited and sovereign; members will never know most of their fellow members, yet they perceive a shared identity in the mind of each individual.
  • $ext{The nation is imagined, limited, and sovereign.}$
• Ethnosymbolism (Anthony D. Smith):
  • Ethnicity is rooted in a myth of descent, shared historical memories, and ethnic symbolism that defines communities and nations by cultural affinity.
• Gender and the nation (Yael Tamir and Yael Yuval-Davis):
  • Women can symbolize the nation and embody its roots, but are often excluded from citizen rights; gendered state policies can construct women as the other within the national body.
• The nation as an act of imagination and construction:
  • National identities are elaborated through stories, symbols, and institutions that define who is included in the national community.
• Historical memory and the politics of memory:
  • Nations deploy memory projects to sustain national belonging; debates about the nation can be reshaped by memory politics and symbolism.
• The role of crisis and modernization:
  • Modernization (industrialization, education, urbanization, mass media) both underpins nationalism and creates pressures that nationalism seeks to address (populations, mobility, cultural standardization, etc.).

France and Germany: origins of modern nationalism

• Romantic beginnings and the French Revolution (late 18th century)
  • Jules Michelet’s romantic inception: the Ancien Régime fell to a universal force of men and women uniting in republican France; the nation emerges as transfigured by the July 1789 revolution; a universal church across France through a new national community.
  • La patrie and patriotism: the revolution creates a new language of nationalism; in 1792, the people are urged to defend the nation rather than a monarchy; the phrase long live the nation replaces long live the king.
  • The Battle of Valmy (1792) marks France’s first military victory against imperial forces and becomes a symbol of national resolve.
  • The 1789 Tennis Court Oath: the Third Estate declares itself the National Assembly, inaugurating popular sovereignty against absolute monarchy.
• Napoleonic era and nationhood (early 1800s)
  • Napoleon’s conquests redraw political geography and spread secular reforms (end of feudalism, Code Napoléon).
  • The idea that social revolution is possible and that nations can exist independently of rulers, and that peoples can be sovereign independent of their rulers, gains ground (as noted by Eric Hobsbawm).
• German nationalism under French influence and the awakening of a German national identity
  • Napoleon’s 1806 dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire reveals that German states are more bonded by language than by political unity.
  • 1812: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm publish Grimm’s fairy tales; language and folklore contribute to a sense of German identity resistant to foreign domination.
  • The 1812–1815 period and the 1848 revolutions: middle‑class liberals in the German states push for unity, a flag (black, red, gold), a German national anthem, and a Frankfurt-based parliament; the 1848 liberal movement is crushed, but seeds of German nationalism remain.
  • Prussia’s emergence and unification drive (mid‑ to late‑19th century).
• The Franco‑Prussian War and the birth of the German nation-state
  • The Franco‑Prussian War (1870–1871) ends with the fall of Napoleon III, the capture of Paris, and German unification under Prussian leadership.
  • The proclamation of Kaiser Wilhelm I at the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles (January 1871) marks the birth of the German Empire and the rise of German national identity as a political project centered on Prussia.
  • The cross of Lorraine remains a symbol of French grievance and national memory about Alsace-Lorraine.
• German history as a science of the nation: Leophold von Ranke and national identity
  • Ranke argues that the Prussian state embodies the modern nation and that the principle of nationality is essential to national life; nations are sustained as long as national self‑identity is maintained.
• French memory, gendered symbolism, and the nation
  • After the defeat in 1871, France cultivates grievance and national pride; Alsace and Lorraine become focal points of nationalist memory.
  • Renan’s What is the Nation? (1882): a nation is a great solidarity built on a past sacrifice and a present consent to continue a common life; emphasizes sacrifice as a key to national belonging and anticipates imagined community ideas with a focus on self‑transformation through memory.
  • Marianne as national symbol; women are connected to the national project while often excluded from formal political rights (French women lacked voting rights until 1945).
• Visual and symbolic culture
  • 1872: Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’ Hope depicts a woman bearing a sheaf (oat‑wheat), symbolizing national revival.
  • The regime built a public culture where symbols (flag, anthem, monuments) foster a sense of national unity.

The late nineteenth to early twentieth century: expansion, crisis, and the invention of the nation

• The construction of “nationalism” as a modern force
  • Eric Hobsbawm’s argument: by the end of the nineteenth century, nationalism becomes the most dynamic political force in Europe; the term nationalism is largely a late nineteenth‑century invention; France is pivotal in shaping these nationalist ideas.
• Global and regional nationalist movements
  • Baltic States and Poland: resistance to Russian rule; Austro‑Hungarian empire’s unity threatens from various nationalist movements.
  • United Kingdom: Irish nationalism advances toward Home Rule or independence.
• Forces intensifying nationalist self‑consciousness (late 19th century)
  • Education and literacy improvements; rise of national press (1871: one national newspaper; 1891: 33 national newspapers).
  • Urbanization and migration from rural areas to cities concentrate nationalist messaging.
  • Industrialization, modernization, and the destabilization of traditional communities spur a search for national cohesion via shared ethnicity, language, and culture.
• The interwar and interwar‑era developments
  • Nationalism intersects with the rise of rival ideologies and social turmoil in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, setting the stage for World War I and the dangerous, exclusionary strands of nationalist politics.
• The outbreak of the First World War and its nationalist dimensions
  • Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip catalyzes a broader nationalist conflict.
  • The war is framed by a narrative of national sacrifice and the defense of the nation.
  • Verdun (1916): a symbol of national endurance; over 700,000 casualties; an ossuary was built for unknown soldiers (roughly 130,000 remains mixed from French and German forces).
• Aftermath of World War I and German humiliation
  • The Versailles signing (1919) ends the war and imposes punitive terms on Germany; the humiliation fuels nationalist resentment and sets the stage for radical movements.
  • Weimar Republic experiences economic collapse and political fragmentation, contributing to extremist nationalist currents, including right‑wing, racist ideologies (Nazism) after 1933.

The Nazi era, Vichy France, and postwar European integration

• Nazi Germany and the politics of exclusion
  • The Nazi nationalist project is defined by racial purity, exclusion of Jews and other minorities, and aggressive expansionism; the Holocaust results in the expropriation, deportation, and murder of millions.
  • The regime centralizes power and imposes a racist, totalitarian national culture.
• Vichy France and a collaborationist national revolution (1940–1944)
  • Vichy regime embraces a national revolution emphasizing work, family, and fatherland; excludes Jews and other groups from public life; Aryanization of the economy.
  • Gildea notes that the regime suppressed class and race differences in pursuit of a narrowly conceived national unity.
• French and German postwar leadership and European integration
  • Charles de Gaulle leads Free French resistance after the occupation; postwar, France supports European integration.
  • Renan’s idea that nations can disappear is revisited in the European context: a European confederation is proposed.
  • From the 1950s, France and Germany push economic integration through the European Economic Community (EEC).
  • 1989: The fall of the Berlin Wall leads to German reunification and a new possibility for European political integration.
  • 1992: The Maastricht Treaty creates the European Union (EU) with a common currency (the euro) and expanded competencies in foreign policy, security cooperation, and the law.
  • Verdun ossuary hand‑in‑hand gesture (1989–1990s symbolism) underscores reconciliation; Maastricht is described as the beginning of a “new story” rather than the end of an old one.
• Public debates about Europe and national identities in late 20th century
  • Tony Judt argues that Maastricht and the bureaucratic European project bring the question of the nation back into national debates, with people asking how nation‑state identities fit into a more integrated Europe.
  • The rise of transnational governance raises questions about national memory and identity, and about the role of the nation in the European project.
• France in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: memory, patrimony, and identity
  • Post‑war memory politics and the project Les lieux de mémoire (Realm of Memory) (1984–1992): seven volumes and about 5,600 pages document France’s national memory across culture, language, cathedrals, gastronomy, and town planning; reflects confidence that French national history justifies a grand patrimony, but also anxiety that national memory could fade.
  • The Belief that a homogeneous French identity could be endangered by demographic shifts and global migration leads to renewed emphasis on patrimony and memory as a defense of national identity.
• Contemporary debates on identity, religion, and secularism in France
  • 2004 veil ban in state schools, targeting observant Muslim girls; aligns with secular republicanism but highlights gendered and religious exclusions within national policy.
  • Yael Yuval-Davis’s analysis that women are marginalized within the nation through separate gendered policy frameworks; the veil ban is argued to have reinforced exclusionary secularism.
  • The National Front (now National Rally) leverages secularism and immigration debates; Le Pen’s Alým speech (2006) frames Europe’s political landscape as a struggle against perceived threats to national sovereignty and identity.
• Contemporary Germany and far‑right nationalism
  • PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West), founded in Dresden (2014), attracts thousands seeking to curb immigration; the movement later informs the rise of the AfD (Alternative for Germany), which becomes a major parliamentary force.
  • Malte Thran and Lukas Bundt link PEGIDA and AfD to Benedict Anderson’s imagined community framework: foreigners are not seen as legitimate members of the national community; ethnic homogenization becomes a political objective as a defense against globalization.
• The enduring tension between liberal democracy and nationalism
  • Liberalism, democracy, capitalism helped construct open, inclusive national identities in Europe; globalization and economic upheavals challenge these norms and fuel nationalist backlashes.
  • The European project has sought to reconcile national interests with supranational governance, but questions about the nation’s role, sovereignty, and identity persist in the early twenty‑first century.

Key people, symbols, and terms to remember

• Theorists and their core ideas
  • Ernest Gellner: nationalism arises with modernization; mass education and uniform citizenship are prerequisites.
  • Anthony D. Smith: ethnosymbolism; ethnicity rooted in myth and shared symbols.
  • Yael Tamir: nationalism and gender; women as symbolic but often excluded from political rights.
  • Benedict Anderson: imagined communities; nations are socially constructed and imagined as limited and sovereign.
  • Ernest Renan: What is the Nation? (1882) – nations as solidarity built on sacrifice and a present choice to continue a common life; nations can disappear; early hint of European integration.
  • Eric Hobsbawm: late 19th/early 20th-century nationalism becomes a dynamic force; the idea that nations are modern inventions.
• Key concepts and symbols
  • La patrie (the fatherland), la Marianne (national female personification of France), the cross of Lorraine (symbol of French endurance and memory), the flag, the national anthem, and other national iconography.
  • Grimm brothers and German folklore as a cultural basis for national identity.
  • The Hall of Mirrors (Palace of Versailles) as the site of the 1871 proclamation of German empire and a symbol of national triumph over France.
  • The Verdun ossuary (national necropolis) as a symbol of shared sacrifice of French and German soldiers in World War I.
  • The Realm of Memory (Les lieux de mémoire) project as a state-sponsored effort to consolidate national memory.
• Political developments and institutions
  • Tennis Court Oath and the National Assembly as foundational moments for popular sovereignty in France.
  • Code Napoléon and secular state reforms that reshape European governance.
  • 1848 revolutions and the Frankfurt Parliament as early attempts at German constitutional nation‑building.
  • 1871 unification of Germany; Versailles as a symbol of victory and memory; the rise of a strong German national state under Prussian leadership.
  • 1992 Maastricht Treaty and the European Union as frameworks that reshape how national identity interacts with regional and global governance.
  • 2004 hijab ban in France and 2006 Lepenist political shifts as episodes illustrating the ongoing contest over national identity, secularism, and inclusion/exclusion.
  • PEGIDA and AfD as contemporary manifestations of nationalist mobilization in Germany.

Important dates and numbers (for quick reference)

• $1789$ – Tennis Court Oath; start of popular sovereignty in France.
• $1792$ – Battle of Valmy; defense of the French nation against invasion.
• $1804$ – Napoleon crowns himself Emperor; state centralization and secular reforms expand.
• $1806$ – Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire; language becomes a unifying factor in German nationalism.
• $1812$ – Grimm brothers publish folk tales; language and culture contribute to national identity.
• $1848$ – Liberal revolutions in German lands; calls for unity and a national constitution fail at that time.
• $1860s$ – Prussia under William I and Otto von Bismarck seeks to unify Germany; flag colors: black, red, and gold.
• $1870-1871$ – Franco‑Prussian War; Sedan; France’s defeat; Prussia leads to German unification; $1871$ Kaiser Wilhelm I proclaimed in Versailles.
• $1882$ – Renan’s What is the Nation? (essay) outlining sacrifice and common life as foundations of national solidarity.
• $1887$ – Albert Bettinier (artist) painting depicting national memory and revenge relating to Alsace-Lorraine.
• $1889-1914$ – Period when nationalism is described as the most dynamic political force in Europe; press expansion from one national newspaper (1871) to 33 by 1891.
• $1914-1918$ – First World War (note: transcript contains a date error “09/08/2014”; actual outbreak is 1914).
• $1919$ – Versailles Peace Conference; harsh terms for Germany.
• $1933-1945$ – Nazi regime and Second World War; mass violence and persecution.
• $1945-1992$ – Postwar European integration and memory politics; EEC, Maastricht Treaty, euro; German reunification (1989/1990).
• $1984-1992$ – Realm of Memory project in France; seven volumes, ~5,600 pages.
• $2004$ – French hijab ban in state schools; secular republicanism intersecting with immigrant communities.
• $2006$ – Jean‑Marie Le Pen’s Almy speech; shift of National Front toward inclusionary secularism.
• $2014-2016$ – PEGIDA and the rise of AfD in Germany; debates about immigration and national belonging.

Meta observations and implications

• Nationalism is a contested and evolving phenomenon: it is not a natural state but a product of political decisions, memory, symbols, and global contexts.
• The relationship between nationalism and modernization is dialectical: modernization creates conditions for national homogenization and education, while nationalism seeks to stabilize communities amidst rapid change.
• The European Union represents a major shift in the understanding of nationalism, moving from rival sovereign nation‑states to a more integrated regional order, though national identities remain powerful and politically consequential.
• The ongoing tension between inclusive, liberal national identities and exclusionary, nationalist currents (often linked to immigration, religion, or perceived threats to cultural continuity) remains a central political fault line in both France and Germany, and across Europe.

Study tips and quick references

• Remember the main theoretical lines: Gellner (modernization and homogenization), Smith (ethnosymbolism), Tamir/Yuval‑Davis (gender and belonging), Anderson (imagined communities).
• Be able to explain how symbols (flag, anthem, Marianne, Cross of Lorraine), memory projects (Les lieux de mémoire), and major events (Napoleon’s reforms, 1848 revolutions, 1871 unification, WWI/WWII) shaped national identities.
• Be aware of the shift from nationhood as a primarily military/political project to a more complex cultural and symbolic project that interacts with supranational frameworks (EU, Maastricht) and global crises.
• Note the contemporary resurgence of nationalism in various regions and how it intersects with debates over immigration, secularism, and multiculturalism.
• When discussing France and Germany, emphasize the continuity and conflict between two competing national projects and how their histories influenced European integration.