identities. By exploring the true meaning of the language used to define them, it is possible to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary political debates relating to nationhood. My argument will not focus on the violent conflicts between nations or ethnic groups during the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. The purpose of this section is merely to explore the intellectual foundations of a specific myth of national identity. By tracing this myth back to its origins, we begin to understand the role it has played in shaping modern European political thought. This concept was not borrowed by the French from any other languages or cultures. Any external influences, if they even existed, were seamlessly assimilated into France’s specific context, namely conditions there during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The concept of peuple was born out of social and economic realities, and is inseparable from the institutions established during the French Revolution. Historiographers have commented on connections between the revolutionary ideal of peuple and the ideology of nationhood forged in the medieval era. These parallels are used to amplify the general ideology of national belonging that has run through the course of France’s history. It would be unwise to create too rigid a distinction between the ideology of peuple and that of nation. However, as the development of political discourse is shaped by these shifts in language, it is worth making some observations regarding the differences between these concepts. The distinction between peuple and nation has its roots in the radical politics of 1789. In effect, our definition of these terms is connected to the social landscape of France at the end of the eighteenth century and the seismic changes brought about by the Revolution. At the time a new political identity was conceived. A historico-political analysis of the word peuple suggests that it refers to the masses, to the emotional state of a population, to a national spirit that exists as a continuum between the past and present. Nation, on the other hand, has more clearly defined parameters: it refers to the social, judicial and historical aspects of the state.1 Whereas le peuple – like das Volk – implies the idea of a community, nation entails a more complex system, such as a society organised by a state, an entity with a coherent political purpose, exercised both internally and externally. Nation transcends the local sphere, it goes 16
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