The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism 16801800

About this book

Using eighteenth-century France as a case study David Bell offers an important new argument about the origins of nationalism. Before the eighteenth century the very idea of nation-buildinga central component of nationalismdid not exist. During this period leading French intellectual and political figures came to see perfect national unity as a critical priority and so sought ways to endow all French people with the same language laws customs and values. The period thus gave rise to the first large-scale nationalist program in history.