Introduction: War and the idea of EuropeIn the last volume of his monumental Jean-Christophe, published in 1912, Romain Rolland lingered on a disturbing change unsettling European society:The fire smouldering in the forest of Europe was beginning to burst into flames. In vain did they try to put it out in one place; it only broke out in another. With gusts of smoke and a shower of sparks it swept from one point to another, burning the dry brushwood.[…] The whole of Europe, that Europe that only yesterday was sceptical and apathetic, like a dead wood, was swept by the flames. All men were possessed by the desire for battle. War was ever on the point of breaking out. It was stamped out, but it sprang to life again. […] Europe looked like a vast armed vigil. 1 It was an accurate premonition; and it was shared by others. In 1913, Carl Gustav Jung's nightmares of a tremendous flood covering the whole of Europe, a land devastated 'by yellow waves, swimming rubble, and the death of countless thousands', and Ludwig Meidner's 'Apokalyptische Stadt', offering the viewers a burning and devastated city, both announced the impending catastrophe that would soon tear Europe apart. 2 From around 1900 onwards, the feeling of impending doom came to be shared by an increasing number of writers, artists, and intellectuals. Many of them, belonging to avant-gardes and arrière-gardes alike, were eager to welcome it. 3 As Rolland noted, Europe seemed possessed by a seemingly inexplicable lust for war, violence, and revolt. The acceptance of an inevitable decadence or decline, so popular in intellectual circles from the 1870s to the 1890s, had gradually receded, giving space to a yearning for action. A desire for great men and heroic deeds became widespread. Violence seemed the solution to Europe's predicaments: the only way to arrest its decline.The place of warfare violence in the history of ideas, images, and representations of Europe is an aspect often overlooked by historians. Partly, this has been a consequence of the prominent role played by the liberal discourse about Europe. In the works of a variegated array of liberal thinkers that includes the Baron de Montesquieu, François Guizot, and Benedetto Croce, Europe has been by definition the place of liberty, usually contrasted with Asia as the land of despotism. Consistently, its history has been the story of the unfolding of freedomhowever imperfectand of the attainment of perpetual peacedespite the many drawbacks. Progress would inevitably lead to a pacified and prosperous Europe. In some cases, as in Richard Cobden's popular version, peace was preceded or accompanied by some sort of economic unification. In this important vulgate, practical reason and economic interests would eventually lead to a European federation ending all wars. While this has been one of the most important discourses about European identitynot least for political convenienceothers, less popular yet more disenchanted and realistic, considered Europe as the place where, despite unending massacresor, perh...

The Shaping of French National Identity casts new light on the intellectual origins of the dominant and 'official' French nineteenth-century national narrative. Focussing on the historical debates taking place throughout the eighteenth century and during the Restoration, Matthew D'Auria evokes a time when the nation's origins were being questioned and discussed and when they acquired the meaning later enshrined in the official rhetoric of the Third Republic. He examines how French writers and scholars reshaped the myths, symbols, and memories of pre-modern communities. Engaging with the myth of 'our ancestors the Gauls' and its ideological triumph over the competing myth of 'our ancestors the Franks', this study explores the ways in which the struggle developed, and the values that the two discourses enshrined, the collective actors they portrayed, and the memories they evoked. D'Auria draws attention to the continuity between ethnic discourses and national narratives and to the competition between various groups in their claims to represent the nation and to define their past as the 'true' history of France.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract