Reflections on the Rhineland in the Revolutionary Age

[Faeelin]

So I'm reading a book ont he Rhineland in the Revolutionary Period, and it mentions some facts that I think people here might find interesting.

1) We overestimate the importance of territorial fragmentation in the Holy Roman Empire. In some places it probably hindered economic development. In the Rhineland, however, the disputes between provinces failed to stop marriages between families in Aachen and Dusseldorf, or the or the establishment of familial ties between the Lutheran manufacturing aristocracy of Monschau and the economic elites of Aachen, Burtscheid, Krefeld, Berg and Mark; Larger firms, like families, transcended borders. Monschau’s largest enterprises, for example, had branches extending into Prussian, Palatine and Austrian territory. Textile manufacturers that had a putting-out system extended across borders, encompassing families in Cologne, Krefeld, and Julich-Berg. In addition, Rhenish fragmentation encouraged economic liberalism.

Taxes were low "partly because so much industry was located in the countryside, but also because territorial fragmentation meant that trade could be diverted towards towns with the most competitive tax regimes. In the Prussian enclaves, for example, peasants purchased goods in neighbouring territories where taxes were lower. Over time, fiscal competition resulted in lower taxes everywhere and harmonisation between town and country; a shift to property taxes."

2) The Rhineland was a highly literate, liberal society, with a literacy rate around 91% for men. As you'd expect, the late 18th century saw increasing appeals before the Imperial Court in Berlin by cities complaining that magisters were corrupt, secretive, and arbitrary. There was also demand for an independent judiciary, and a lot of the cases that were sent to Berlin entailed accusations that judges were being controlled by magisters.

3) In the princely states, absolutism in the Rhineland had been turned back by a ruling by the Imperial Court in 1714 that the states needed to consent to taxation. Wuttemburg's parliament was considered so powerful that Fox said it was the equal of Westminster, and in Cologne the estates controlled not only taxation but financial administration. In the 1770s and 1780s the way the estates perceived themselves also began to shift. For instance, in Trier the Landtag began to call itself "des volckes Reprasentanten," or the People's Representatives.

4) When the Revolutionary War broke out, the Estates in Western Germany replied to demands for troops with demands for concessions of their own. In the Palatinate, peasants demanded the abolition of noble privileges, while in Cologne the estates pressed demands for privilege in return for funding for the war effort. So even if the Revolution was strangled early, the region was due for a shakeup.

I'll post something about Hoche in a bit.

[Malta Shah]

The region probably could have been accounted for a socialist revolt.

[Faeelin]

Anyway, this brings us to Lazare Hoche.

Partly in response to Napoleon's sister republics in Italy, Hoche toyed with establishing one in the Rhineland. In an unprecedented move, Trier, Cologne, and Julich-Berg came together to form a reply to Hoche; after the general's death, they sent delegates to the Rastatt conference proposing that the Rhineland be united as a neutral Republic linked to France via a customs union. So it's possible that we might see a liberal, independent Rhineland emerging out of the Revolution, with implications for German nationalism.

[The Admiral Hook]

Anyway, this brings us to Lazare Hoche.

Partly in response to Napoleon's sister republics in Italy, Hoche toyed with establishing one in the Rhineland. In an unprecedented move, Trier, Cologne, and Julich-Berg came together to form a reply to Hoche; after the general's death, they sent delegates to the Rastatt conference proposing that the Rhineland be united as a neutral Republic linked to France via a customs union. So it's possible that we might see a liberal, independent Rhineland emerging out of the Revolution, with implications for German nationalism.

I'm researching like crazy but I can't find much. When was Hoche "toying" with this idea?

[Malta Shah]

France has always been at the Rhineland, they know that it can make them some honey that is money.

[Thande]

Hmm, interesting. So one can conceive of a setting where the French Revolution is crushed (at least temporarily) chiefly at the hands of a pan-German alliance, but the Rhineland states get liberal reforms as part of it. You can imagine a few years down the line the Prussians throwing their weight about trying to reverse this, and it's interesting to speculate what might happen (Belgian revolution if it didn't happen before, for instance?)

[Faeelin]

Thande: I think that's apt. There's also the question of how Napoleon governed the region. Some more thoughts follow. This is all a bit random but I think interesting.

(Interestingly, the language of the region was considered unintelliglbe to a lot of Germans from elsewhere. There are references to people speaking French, Walloon, and Dutch throughout the region.)

Naturally, the French were going to fix this. The French state planned on assimilating and converting the region to good Frenchmen. In August 1810, an ordinance directed that all public and private announcements be made in French – ‘the general language of the Empire’ – though a German translation might be provided. It also changed street signs from German to French and ordered the closure of schools that did not teach French, and importation of German literature was restricted.

The French also toyed with military colonies in the Rhineland and Northern Italy. As a memorandum from 1799 argued:

What better means of achieving this aim than through the establishment of colonies, or rather, through the transplantation of the diverse peoples of the French Empire. Could we soon not have, stretching from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, only one spirit, one language, and one homogeneity of sentiments?

Weirdly, this focus on French nationalism was also associated with a denationalization of the Empire. Napoleon restored the feast of Charlemagne in Aachen, and in propaganda compared the war of 1809 to Charlemagne's war against the Saxons. (He even hinted he would restore the Imperial insignia, taken from Aachen by the Austrians in the 1790s, to their rightful place).

So, a lot of ways for this to go in a Napoleonic France that survives. A troubled nationalist province? Gradual assimilation and adoption of French? Or the birthplace of neo-Carolignianism?

[Faeelin]

I'm researching like crazy but I can't find much. When was Hoche "toying" with this idea?

1797, before he died of pneumonia.

[Admiral Matt]

So, a lot of ways for this to go in a Napoleonic France that survives. A troubled nationalist province? Gradual assimilation and adoption of French? Or the birthplace of neo-Carolignianism?

Fascinating.

On the one hand, the French are unique in Europe in their successes at assimilating minorities. The French Basques, Bretons, and Alsations demonstrate that clearly enough. Contrast Italy or Germany, which haven't even been successful in assimilating all their major dialects. Only the English have had comparable success, but that has been by backhanded methods, not the deliberate French ones. The Anglicization of Ireland, despite centuries of earlier attempts, largely met success by accident. That's key because historical attempts to assimilate minority regions usually stoke or even create local consciousness. At any rate, if anyone could pull it off, it's the French.

On the other, though, it sounds as if in some ways they were planning not to treat the area as were their other odd provinces. Military colonies in particular would seem to have serious backfire potential.

I think ultimately it would depend very much on events post 1815. National identity is all about perceptions - resentment or the lack thereof. The way in which the wars and conflicts of the ensuing century go on to be fought would be the determining factor. If there's a war fought in the Rhineland and the French make themselves look bad to their German citoyens....

Post Script: Is that "schools that did not include French lessons" or "schools that did not teach primarily in French?"

[Dunois]

Weirdly, this focus on French nationalism was also associated with a denationalization of the Empire. Napoleon restored the feast of Charlemagne in Aachen, and in propaganda compared the war of 1809 to Charlemagne's war against the Saxons. (He even hinted he would restore the Imperial insignia, taken from Aachen by the Austrians in the 1790s, to their rightful place).

So, a lot of ways for this to go in a Napoleonic France that survives. A troubled nationalist province? Gradual assimilation and adoption of French? Or the birthplace of neo-Carolignianism?

Rather interestingly I was speculating about this kind of stuff recently and here is my take on the question.

While France did managed to "assimilate" its fringes quite successfully this was done at the cpst of suppressing local languages and customs to a large degree. Something which still creates resentment in the regions and in anycase had a very negative impact overall. Indeed, instead of creating a cultural identity like Britain did, France created an identity centered around the state and the government. Something which led to a slate of problems later on. The best illustration of this is that for some the Republic = France and France can't be anything else but a republic, thus giving rise to sclerotic and unreformable state.

The same could very well happen to much larger degree with Napoleon. Indeed he is very well remembered for creating institutions like the code civil and the like. So an Empire whose identity is centered on its institutions, on abstract values and on obedience to the state is quite possible. The fate of minority languages would be the same as OTL there and possibly even worse.

On the other hand it some kind of "Carolingian" or "Greater French" identity could very well be created. Should this happen, layered identities à la Great Britain could become the norm. In Rhineland one could Rhenish and French the same way one can be Welsh and British in Wales. In Flanders one could be Flemish and French. In southern France you could even see a dual Occitain/French identity, though that's more debatable. In this scenario northern France would end up like England in Britain, the dominant polity whose language would become a vernacular across the entire Empire and whose identity and norms would shape the rest. I would nevertheless expect French to pick up German/Dutch/Flemish words and expressions. For the very simply reason that the north of the Empire, especially the area between the Somme and the Rhine will become THE economic core of the nation. Both coal, iron as well as important harbours are there so the area could easily end up much more industrialised than OTL. Significant emigration from poorer regions of the Empire will take place towards the area, Brittany, southern France and northern Italy are likely candidates as manpower reservoirs. Effectively, the "old France" of the Franks will end up being the core of the Empire, possibly strenghtening a "Carolinigian or "Franconish" identity yet further (the industrial cities of Northern Britain were and are unargulably the most "British" of the UK). Another thing I could see happening could be the rise of a rival to Paris in the north. That's a long shot, but if industrial capital and money stays in the north. I can easily see Brussels ballooning into a true rival to Paris possibly with several milions inhabitants, perhaps the main stock exchange in the French Empire would be located there, along with the corporate HQ of the steel, iron and chemical giants.

The book in question for thoe interested is this one by the way:
http://books.google.fr/books?id=cjdYPO6A_KoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Large chunks can be read online for free!

[Faeelin]

Indeed, instead of creating a cultural identity like Britain did, France created an identity centered around the state and the government. Something which led to a slate of problems later on. The best illustration of this is that for some the Republic = France and France can't be anything else but a republic, thus giving rise to sclerotic and unreformable state.

I think you're on to something very interesting here, but I am a bit confused as to what you mean. How is British identity cultural when the French identity is not?

The idea of a "layered" identity is a very interesting one.

I would nevertheless expect French to pick up German/Dutch/Flemish words and expressions. For the very simply reason that the north of the Empire, especially the area between the Somme and the Rhine will become THE economic core of the nation. Both coal, iron as well as important harbours are there so the area could easily end up much more industrialised than OTL.

I agree that economic synergy would make the Low countries, Rhineland, and Northeastern France much more industrialized than OTL. A neat, and perhaps better world than our own, depending on how you view Napoleon.

[Dunois]

I think you're on to something very interesting here, but I am a bit confused as to what you mean. How is British identity cultural when the French identity is not?

The idea of a "layered" identity is a very interesting one.


A layered identity is pretty much what you have in the United Kingdom at the moment as you can be both British AND English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Ulsterman and the like. There were very few attempts to create and impose a single British identity in order to replace the others. It was tried, witness the use of "Northern Britain" instead of Scotland for a while after the Act of Union in 1707. But it did not succeed.
Britain unlike France never went down the route of actively forcing uniformisation in all spheres of life. English imposed itself all over the British Isles not because of decisions of the British state, but naturally and gradually with the spread of communication and commerce. This was especially the case in Ireland and in southern Wales.

On the other hand while factors like better communications and the need to learn French in order to better onsellf played a part in France. The promotion of French was explicitely encouraged by the state. For example, French was and remains the one and only language used in education. There is even a saying that during the late nineteenth century schools pupils speaking in patois or in languages like Breton to each other, would ahve to wear a dunce cap, passing it on every time someone spoke in a language othr than French. The last pupil to get it by the end of playtime would be punished.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbole

Don't forget as well that one of the results of the French Revolution was the imposition of a single civil code based on Roman law for the entire country. Before that, the country was divided between Roman law in the south and customary law in the north, something very broadly akin to common law. Something of the sort never happened in the United Kingdom, with Scots Law and the English common law cohabitating side by side. Until quite recently, there was not even a British "supreme court" so to speak.

While there is such a thing as a cultural French identity, formed by centuries of cohabitation within a given territory and influences between the various constituents regions of France. The French identity is also very closely tied to the state and its institutions, a phenomenum which has actually gained in importance during the last few decades. Witness the importance of Republican symbols in France to the extent that in the eyes of some, the identity of France is intimately linked to its Republican institutions itself. The motto of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity is deeply universalist and it has been claimed before and it will surely be claimed again, that loyalty and acceptance of this motto is sufficient to become French.

Had the French Empire lasted longer, especially in its 1811 borders. I can definitely see attempts aimed at uniting the very diverse people of the Empire into a single identity. It could go down the Jacobinist route of linking "Frenchness" with loyalty to the Empire principles. Adherence to the principles of the Enlightenment, to rationalism and reason would be key part of this identity. Considering Napoleon stormy relations with the Church, you could even have a separation between the church and the state happening a lot earlier than OTL.
The problem with this option is that the resulting identity would be highly artificial (a bit like the "Soviet" identity was in the USSR). Issues relating to language would also inevitably arise, especially as forcibly imposing French across the entire Empire would be convenient for administrative reasons. All kind of ideological arguments could be used to justify this, such as labeling French the "language of liberty" or as a "new Latin".

The other option is to adopt a more flexible approach towards local identities and to go down the British route. There the Empire role would be limited to the promotion of commun cultural symbols between the French and say the Rhenish and the Flemings. Charlemagne being only one of them, but ideals of liberty and freedom from "feudalist oppression" could be part of the package as well. The state would adopt a hands off approach with regards to the language question and local customs. French would by default end up the main language of the Empire, but its spread to the fringes of the Empire would be gradual. Effectively, French would become the main vernacular of the Empire in the same way that English was and remains the main vernacular in the British Isles but the state would have very little to do with this process. Instead, economic imperatives and peoples' decisions would be the driving forces of change.

A third approach which would be a mixture of both is another possibility. Essentially what happened in France OTL.

The first approach run the risk of failing in the long run. The resulting state would be very inflexible and very resistant to change, like all states based around an ideology where. The Napoleonic bureaucracy could become increasingly impotent and inwards looking, implementing regulations by the book and stifling creativity. Industrialisation would occur, but would be driven by the state in this context.

The second approach offers a lot more potential in the long run. The resulting Empire would be much more flexible and adaptative since anyone would find its own niche in the Empire.

[Imladrik]

While France did managed to "assimilate" its fringes quite successfully this was done at the cpst of suppressing local languages and customs to a large degree. Something which still creates resentment in the regions and in anycase had a very negative impact overall. Indeed, instead of creating a cultural identity like Britain did, France created an identity centered around the state and the government. Something which led to a slate of problems later on. The best illustration of this is that for some the Republic = France and France can't be anything else but a republic, thus giving rise to sclerotic and unreformable state.

I disagree with you on this, as the assimilation of the fringe populations wasn't made at the cost of the local languages. The regional languages died in the last fifty years, in the years following the war, when the restriction placed on regional languages learning vanished for most of them (except the Alsatian, as it was assimilated to the german languages and fought by the French government). The Breton languages for example disappeared because of several factors, like the mass media, the school, the necessity to know french to get a job in the public administration, the popularization of the railroads, which brought back some second generation migrants who didn't know any Breton anymore, emigration of french-speaking french in Britanny.
For the culture, i agree with you, the French republic managed to establish a culture based around it, but it was also a result of the revolution which created a national and federating myth. For example, Strasbourg, the largest city of Alsace was a centre of the Revolution, where the population, if we believe the legend, put a giant cap upon the Cathedral, even if it was not French speaking.
And for your interpretation of the French Republic being a sclerotic and unreformable state could you explain more ?

The same could very well happen to much larger degree with Napoleon. Indeed he is very well remembered for creating institutions like the code civil and the like. So an Empire whose identity is centered on its institutions, on abstract values and on obedience to the state is quite possible. The fate of minority languages would be the same as OTL there and possibly even worse.

Napoléon didn't really create the civil code but more or less finished a project started earlier in the revolution and made it a little more reactionary. All he did was modify or rename functions created by the various government before him. And an centralising empire under Napoléon would not last long i think, as it would be destroyed by internal and external pressure as well as Napoléon endless ambition and arrogance.

A layered identity is pretty much what you have in the United Kingdom at the moment as you can be both British AND English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Ulsterman and the like. There were very few attempts to create and impose a single British identity in order to replace the others. It was tried, witness the use of "Northern Britain" instead of Scotland for a while after the Act of Union in 1707. But it did not succeed.
Britain unlike France never went down the route of actively forcing uniformisation in all spheres of life. English imposed itself all over the British Isles not because of decisions of the British state, but naturally and gradually with the spread of communication and commerce. This was especially the case in Ireland and in southern Wales.

I'm sorry but you can have a layered identity and be french. I personnaly consider myself a French and an Alsatian, a sentiment shared by most of the Alsatian population. And for the uniformisation, it happened mostly for administrative reasons, and the linguistic uniformisation failed before the appearance of extensive and cheap railroad network and mass media, like in Ireland with the spread of English instead of Irish Gaelic (even if the English tried to impose the english language in their colonization effort), and in Scotland and Wales too.

On the other hand while factors like better communications and the need to learn French in order to better onsellf played a part in France. The promotion of French was explicitely encouraged by the state. For example, French was and remains the one and only language used in education. There is even a saying that during the late nineteenth century schools pupils speaking in patois or in languages like Breton to each other, would ahve to wear a dunce cap, passing it on every time someone spoke in a language othr than French. The last pupil to get it by the end of playtime would be punished.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbole


And this practice was used in schools in Wales and Ireland, as well as in the USA to destroy indian culture.

Don't forget as well that one of the results of the French Revolution was the imposition of a single civil code based on Roman law for the entire country. Before that, the country was divided between Roman law in the south and customary law in the north, something very broadly akin to common law. Something of the sort never happened in the United Kingdom, with Scots Law and the English common law cohabitating side by side. Until quite recently, there was not even a British "supreme court" so to speak.


It was even worth as some villages had different laws even if they were distant of a few kilometers. It was even a cause of the Revolution as the revolutionaries wanted equality in the law. And comparing the legal system of France and England is moot as their premises are different.

While there is such a thing as a cultural French identity, formed by centuries of cohabitation within a given territory and influences between the various constituents regions of France. The French identity is also very closely tied to the state and its institutions, a phenomenum which has actually gained in importance during the last few decades. Witness the importance of Republican symbols in France to the extent that in the eyes of some, the identity of France is intimately linked to its Republican institutions itself. The motto of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity is deeply universalist and it has been claimed before and it will surely be claimed again, that loyalty and acceptance of this motto is sufficient to become French.

Yes, the motto is a shortcut to the doctrine of the french republic as it was created by the revolution and if there is a french identity, it is found in these principles of equality liberty and fraternity, not in a common language or a common history. France is not a cultural nation-state, it is an ideological nation-state from the beginning.

[I Blame Communism]

Fascinating stuff all round! Now, to chip in on Scottish matters...

Comparing national identities is always a tricky business, since a nation is something that a few million people are collectively creating for themselves and everyone imagines it a little differently. Generalisation is hard. Sure, most British people definitely have a layered identity, but my mum - Scottish father, English mother, born and raised in England, went to university in Scotland, married a Scot - always identifies as British alone, feeling she's English without quite being English and Scottish without quite being Scots - whereas I think of myself as Scottish and British, like most people. And my granny, who's from a Presbyterian family in Limavady, feels Irish and Scottish and British all at once, in different ways, more parallel than layered.

It's complicated stuff, and I'm sure you have complications like that in many countries, so I wonder whether general comparisons (France is A and Britain B sort of thing) are ever wholly accurate. But I'd certainly say that Dunois has a rather sanitised view of some parts of British history:

Britain unlike France never went down the route of actively forcing uniformisation in all spheres of life. English imposed itself all over the British Isles not because of decisions of the British state, but naturally and gradually with the spread of communication and commerce. This was especially the case in Ireland and in southern Wales.

Just because Scottish state institutions like courts and kirk were left alone, though, doesn't mean that there wasn't any imposition of a language. (The kirk had been an instrument for spreading English for a long time, anyway: Knox himself, who was for a while CoE, was attacked by Catholic churchmen on the grounds that by writing the Book of Discipline in English he was replacing the language of God not with the language of the people but with the language of the bastards down there.) It was a rather patronising "you'll get nowhere speaking like that" attitude rather than "now we must create Italians" type thinking, but local languages and dialects throughout Britain - Gaelic and Welsh, yeah, but also all the different kinds of Scots and indeed English, including the unique Irish kinds, your Ullans and Yola and so on - were kept out of the classroom in favour of standard English, often with the cane.

On the other hand while factors like better communications and the need to learn French in order to better onsellf played a part in France. The promotion of French was explicitely encouraged by the state. For example, French was and remains the one and only language used in education. There is even a saying that during the late nineteenth century schools pupils speaking in patois or in languages like Breton to each other, would ahve to wear a dunce cap, passing it on every time someone spoke in a language othr than French. The last pupil to get it by the end of playtime would be punished.

As I say, this sort of thing was well-known in Britain. Nobody was being discouraged from feeling Scottish and identifying with Scotland, not after Scott; in that sense we were unlike France, where there was no Breton set of institutions and symbols in the official version of patriotism and national feeling. It was simply thought that you had to speak English. Other kinds of speech weren't so much persecuted as contemptously ignored - and at this point that was all that was happening to Czech or Ukrainian or whatever.

The association of language with nation was only starting to crystallise when universal standard primary education came in (1870). For most of the 19th century the connection was inconsistent at best. There were even (Hobsbawm says, I'm no Wales expert) passionately national Welshmen who were resigned to what they saw as the inevitable "euphanasia" of Welsh. And of course the association of Irish nationalism and Irish language happened very late in the day.

Something of the sort never happened in the United Kingdom, with Scots Law and the English common law cohabitating side by side. Until quite recently, there was not even a British "supreme court" so to speak.

Interestingly enough, judges were famous for their broad Scots long after parliamentarians and ministers were expected to speak cultivated English, but then that was in the 18th century before our period, when a lot of Scotland's primary education was actually in local language - which goes to show that there was certainly a possibility of not imposing English on all the schools, it just wasn't one the Victorians were interested in taking.

[Faeelin]

Yes, the motto is a shortcut to the doctrine of the french republic as it was created by the revolution and if there is a french identity, it is found in these principles of equality liberty and fraternity, not in a common language or a common history. France is not a cultural nation-state, it is an ideological nation-state from the beginning.

Speaking as an American, I think this is how Americans perceive their identity, even if it isn't accurate. Especially for European immigrants (but ultimately for everyone else), being American meant buying into American ideology and mores, not being English.

This obviously isn't accurate, since you were required to learn English if you ever wanted to make it, but it is worth noting. I'm not sure what it means, other than "nationalism is a complicated topic, so let's just go back to designing a better Tiger tank."

[I Blame Communism]

A linguistic tidbit to add to what I was saying above:

Gaelic was displaced by Scots over large parts of Scotland (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Languages_of_Scotland_1400_AD.svg) during the late Middle Ages (please ignore the dangerous lunatic claims of the mad Scottish irredentists to Orkney circa 1400 :mad:) and this was indeed a natural process, happening because of David's reforms making English - a Norse-influenced, not-very-Frenchified, northern kind of English: the boroughs were peopled principally from County Durham - the language of trade and administration (the Highlands, to put it bluntly, had precious little trade and barely any administration). I think you might compare it to the medieval advance of German eastward.

Scots, in fact, is basically what you get when you combine northern English dialects (with which it has a great deal in common: "ay" for yes, "yon" as the definite article for distant objects, and so on are all found in Northumberland and indeed in Shakespeare) with a substrata of Gaelic. If you know a smidgeon of Gaelic, you can spot it all over the place:

- Unstressed, unwritten vowels between consonants ("Took ma girul to see a filum").

- The "loch" and "chield" sounds, famously tricky for Englishmen.

- The very pronounced slenderisation of consonants ("A jyoobius account of what happened on Chyoosday").

- Syntactical oddities: "the day" meaning "today" is literally from the Gaelic "an-diugh"; the tautology about it being a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht might have to do with Gaelic's etymologically distinct words for "night" the state, thing, or concept (oidhche) and "night" the period of time (nochd).

- The preference for the definite article. Oh, hey, I'm doing it now! :D

- The tendency to answer questions by giving a verb, in the simplest form "Aye a did" (there's no "yes" or "no" in Gaelic, so you have to).

- Words, especially geographical (brae, loch, corrie, glen, strath) but others too (scrieve, brogue).

...And so on and so forth: classic buried-language stuff.

But the English spoken by people from the Hebrides isn't like that at all: it's notably clear and correct Standard English. Listen to Runrig's version of Loch Lomond and hear every d and t, "before you" and definitely not "afore ye" - and then try listening to the same song sung by a lowlander.

This is precisely because to the parts of Scotland that were still Gaelic at the start of the modern era and where at least part of the population still speak it, English is a foreign, imported language spoken with all the care of the learner. But where Gaelic was naturally and gradually displaced, it has a busy afterlife in the vernacular.

[Faeelin]

While we're on the subject of language, I thought I'd mention the book's discussion of what the devil the Rhinelanders spoke:

At Cologne they speak simply a coarse vulgar German, which degenerates in approaching the flats of Holland: but at Aachen, bad German, bad French, some Dutch and Flemish (bad or good I know not) and a mixture of the Walloon dialect, of which you hear more at Liege, conspire to form a Babel of harmonious diversity.-A British Traveller, in 1818

(Given stereotypes of Britons in the 19th century, I'm surprised he didn't comment on how if you yelled loudly enough they would bring you tea).

It also points out that many Germans on the Right Bank of the Rhine thought the Rhinelandes were more like the Dutch in characters; that the last French prefect in Aachen thought the inhabitants spoke a mixture of Dutch and Walloon; that there were 120 Dutch speaking parishes near Aachen; and that the elite in Aachen already spoke French, a nice example of the linguistic border shifting west after this period.

Something I suspect a lot of the European posters already knew, but I didn't realize how common Dutchish language was in the area, and how extensively French was used. So maybe this could be just a bigger Alsace, after all.

[Imladrik]

Faeelin could you please give me the references of the book you are reading ? I am actually reading a lot about the revolution but have not found much about the Rhineland.

[Faeelin]

Imaldrik: Dunois listed it here, and provided a google books link so you can read a lot of it online:


The book in question for thoe interested is this one by the way:
http://books.google.fr/books?id=cjdYPO6A_KoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Large chunks can be read online for free!

[Dunois]

I disagree with you on this, as the assimilation of the fringe populations wasn't made at the cost of the local languages. The regional languages died in the last fifty years, in the years following the war, when the restriction placed on regional languages learning vanished for most of them (except the Alsatian, as it was assimilated to the german languages and fought by the French government). The Breton languages for example disappeared because of several factors, like the mass media, the school, the necessity to know french to get a job in the public administration, the popularization of the railroads, which brought back some second generation migrants who didn't know any Breton anymore, emigration of french-speaking french in Britanny.
For the culture, i agree with you, the French republic managed to establish a culture based around it, but it was also a result of the revolution which created a national and federating myth. For example, Strasbourg, the largest city of Alsace was a centre of the Revolution, where the population, if we believe the legend, put a giant cap upon the Cathedral, even if it was not French speaking.

Technological advances certainly played a part in this process too, especially in areas where dialected where similar or close to each other, thus favouring uniformisation.

Nevertheless it would have been possible for local dialects and French to cohabit side by side in Brittany or in Alsace for example. This is what happened in Germany for example, where local dialects are still reasonably strong today and in several parts of the United Kingdom. The official attitude in France towards regional languages has been and remains one of neglect. If not of outright comptempt in some circles.
The point I was trying to get across is that this could easily have become much more worse under different circumstances. Either under the guise of nationalism or under trhe guise of ideology/administrative efficiency. Harsher policies towards minority languages could have been implemented. 037771 explored something called lingualism in is We will Meet again timeline, an ideology aiming at complete linguistic uniformisation across nations, by persuasion or by force.

And for your interpretation of the French Republic being a sclerotic and unreformable state could you explain more ?

That's a matter for a very different thread mon ami. But in a nutshell it strikes me that France never really managed to sort out its problem through slow gradual change during the last few decades, we see that every decade with pension reform among other things. Fair to say that other states have similar problems, but in France it seems that we can only achieve changes either as the consequence of wars or revolutions. As a French patriot I find this deeply unsettling as it is the mark of a deeply troubled country. Happy to debate that with you by PM if you want :)

Napoléon didn't really create the civil code but more or less finished a project started earlier in the revolution and made it a little more reactionary. All he did was modify or rename functions created by the various government before him. And an centralising empire under Napoléon would not last long i think, as it would be destroyed by internal and external pressure as well as Napoléon endless ambition and arrogance.

Agreed on that, though Napoleon was very smart to get all the credit for this. Legal reforms were certainly needed, but they could perhaps have been carried out differently. Possibly by allowing for a certain degree of legal autonomy in the different regions of France. This eventually happened to a degree, since Alsace-Moselle has some laws which differ from the rest of the country.

Making a centralising Empire work in the early nineteenth century context would be very hard indeed, since slow communications favour centrifugal forces and the devolution of power. Nevertheless if there is someone capable of trying this, it is Napoleon.

I'm sorry but you can have a layered identity and be french. I personnaly consider myself a French and an Alsatian, a sentiment shared by most of the Alsatian population. And for the uniformisation, it happened mostly for administrative reasons, and the linguistic uniformisation failed before the appearance of extensive and cheap railroad network and mass media, like in Ireland with the spread of English instead of Irish Gaelic (even if the English tried to impose the english language in their colonization effort), and in Scotland and Wales too.

I am not saying that you can't. I was rather pointing out that this is much more uncommon than it is in Britain and that in the eyes of some it can be very hard to concile a Breton or a Corsican identity with a French one. I might be very wrong in saying this, but it strikes me that in Alsace there is a lot of local pride in the fact that the region acts as a "bridge" between France and Germany which greatly helps in developing a layered identity.
The spread of English in Wales and in Ireland was greatly helped in the advent of better communication and also by industrialisation in the former. The state played a minimal role into this and never actively tried to switch the language of the masses to English. The fact that huge tracts of Wales are majority Welsh speaking is a testament of this. Had the British state wanted to, they could have crushed Welsh in Wales, even in the north west.

It was even worth as some villages had different laws even if they were distant of a few kilometers. It was even a cause of the Revolution as the revolutionaries wanted equality in the law. And comparing the legal system of France and England is moot as their premises are different.

As I said before, changes were needed and achieved very good results on balance. With regards to legal systems, the legal systems of northern and southern France were vastly different. Differences which could and maybe should have been conserved to some degree. Northern French law was much further away from Roman law than Southern France law and could very well have evolved into something akin to common law. After all huge tracts of English common law have Norman origins, so it is not as far fetched as you might think. The POD for that would be in the Middle Ages though.

Yes, the motto is a shortcut to the doctrine of the french republic as it was created by the revolution and if there is a french identity, it is found in these principles of equality liberty and fraternity, not in a common language or a common history. France is not a cultural nation-state, it is an ideological nation-state from the beginning.

Here we are down to the core of the problem, since ideological nation states are much more fragile than cultural nation states. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity means very different things to very different people. You can't build a nation on principles which don't mean the same thing to everyone, since it only creates a never ending debate on what these principles mean and how to best "achieve" them. In the case of a multinational French Empire (the French Empire of 1812 was multinational), fraternity could either be translated into the mutual respect and tolerance of each others languages, or be used to justify the imposition of a single language within the Empire boundaries since all of its citizens are "brothers".

France was and has always been a cultural nation-state ever since its fundation fifteen centuries ago. The Revolution is part of French history and of France's identity, but pre Revolution French history is longer than post Revolution French history. What made France, French, of which catholicism is an important part in my opinion (I say that as a non believer) has roots much deeper and much older than the Revolution itself.
Speaking as an American, I think this is how Americans perceive their identity, even if it isn't accurate. Especially for European immigrants (but ultimately for everyone else), being American meant buying into American ideology and mores, not being English.
This obviously isn't accurate, since you were required to learn English if you ever wanted to make it, but it is worth noting. I'm not sure what it means, other than "nationalism is a complicated topic, so let's just go back to designing a better Tiger tank."
In a sense it is very true to say that America is an ideological nation state, but as you say yourself this is not accurate. To me the American identity is deeply associated with the ones of its primarily English speaking founders.
　

It's complicated stuff, and I'm sure you have complications like that in many countries, so I wonder whether general comparisons (France is A and Britain B sort of thing) are ever wholly accurate. But I'd certainly say that Dunois has a rather sanitised view of some parts of British history:

Speaking as someone deeply interested in Franco-British comparisons I can definitely say that France is A and Britain is B comparisons are not fully accurate. More often than not similarities between French and British history transcend differences and makes such comparisons harder. Heck we would not having this discussion if it was not for the fact that France and Britain are both lands which have historically been home to various "constituent peoples" so to speak. Something which is not true in the case of Germany for example (save for the Sorbs and Frisians, but these are tiny minorities).

Just because Scottish state institutions like courts and kirk were left alone, though, doesn't mean that there wasn't any imposition of a language. (The kirk had been an instrument for spreading English for a long time, anyway: Knox himself, who was for a while CoE, was attacked by Catholic churchmen on the grounds that by writing the Book of Discipline in English he was replacing the language of God not with the language of the people but with the language of the bastards down there.) It was a rather patronising "you'll get nowhere speaking like that" attitude rather than "now we must create Italians" type thinking, but local languages and dialects throughout Britain - Gaelic and Welsh, yeah, but also all the different kinds of Scots and indeed English, including the unique Irish kinds, your Ullans and Yola and so on - were kept out of the classroom in favour of standard English, often with the cane.

In the case of Scots I think that we will find ourselves in agreement that the closeness of Scots to English as part of the same language family greatly helped such efforts. The spread of vernacular French across the oil language area was very much a fact as far back as the early nineteenth century. A fast spread made possible by the mutually intelligible nature of these various dialects. Both Scots and Yola are mutually intelligible with English so it does not take much to favour the dominance of a vernacular.
I won't deny the huge influence of the church in the spread of English in Britain, church services in English really put a dent into the popularity of Cornish in Cornwall for example. On the whole however you seem to confirm my impression that the spread of English across the British Isles was more due to semi neglect rather than through deliberate efforts. Deliberate efforts played a much greater part in spreading French in France, or Tuscan (Italian) in Italy.

[Dunois]

A linguistic tidbit to add to what I was saying above:

Gaelic was displaced by Scots over large parts of Scotland (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Languages_of_Scotland_1400_AD.svg) during the late Middle Ages (please ignore the dangerous lunatic claims of the mad Scottish irredentists to Orkney circa 1400 :mad:) and this was indeed a natural process, happening because of David's reforms making English - a Norse-influenced, not-very-Frenchified, northern kind of English: the boroughs were peopled principally from County Durham - the language of trade and administration (the Highlands, to put it bluntly, had precious little trade and barely any administration). I think you might compare it to the medieval advance of German eastward.


With regards to Norse influence in Scots, the one which always springs up to my mind is bairn for kid. The Norwegian for kid is barn.
Care to teach me some Scots IBC, I quite like to use Scottish idioms when I speak actually. I use wee and folks a lot more than most people south of the border.

[Uriel]

Wuttemburg's parliament was considered so powerful that Fox said it was the equal of Westminster, and in Cologne the estates controlled not only taxation but financial administration.


Such powerful traditional estates (burghers, nobles, clerigy) existed in many german states, although they were pushed back in the bigger ones under the influence of french absolutism.

Interestingly the old order was abolished in Württemberg

http://www.slideshine.de/browser/uploads/5/K%C3%B6nigreich%20W%C3%BCrttemberg/Wappen%20Deutsches%20Reich%20-%20K%C3%B6nigreich%20W%C3%BCrttemberg.jpg

(sorry, I amfrom there)

during the Napolionic times and replaced with one, that gave the monarch much more power.

Democrats and Traditionalists campaigned unsuccesfully for the old system to be restored (and one of the more famous wiriters of the time wrote a balad about it)

Das alte, gute Recht

Ludwig Uhland

Wo je bei altem, gutem Wein
Der Württemberger zecht,
Da soll der erste Trinkspruch sein:
Das alte, gute Recht!

Das Recht, das unsres Fürsten Haus
Als starker Pfeiler stützt,
Und das im Lande ein und aus
Der Armut Hütten schützt.

Das Recht, das uns Gesetze gibt,
Die keine Willkür bricht;
Das offene Gerichte liebt
Und giltig Urteil spricht.

Das Recht, das mäßig Steuern schreibt
Und wohl zu rechnen weiß,
Das an der Kasse sitzen bleibt
Und kargt mit unsrem Schweiß.

Das unser heil'ges Kirchengut
Als Schutzpatron bewacht,
Das Wissenschaft und Geistesglut
Getreulich nährt und facht.

Das Recht, das jedem freien Mann
Die Waffen gibt zur Hand,
Damit er stets verfechten kann
Den Fürsten und das Land.

Das Recht, das jedem offen läßt
Den Zug in alle Welt,
Das uns allein durch Liebe fest
Am Mutterboden hält.

Das Recht, des wohlverdienten Ruhm
Jahrhunderte bewährt,
Das jeder, wie sein Christentum,
Von Herzen liebt und ehrt.

Das Recht, das eine schlimme Zeit
Lebendig uns begrub,
Das jetzt mit neuer Regsamkeit
Sich aus dem Grab erhub,

Ja! wenn auch wir von hinnen sind,
Besteh' es fort und fort,
Und sei für Kind und Kindeskind
Des schönsten Glückes Hort!

Und wo bei altem, gutem Wein
Der Württemberger zecht,
Soll stets der erste Trinkspruch sein:
Das alte, gute Recht!

It should also be noted that the old estates were for most of their existence dominated by the pietist, protestant upper-middle class and therefore more fiscally, morally and culturally conservative than the dukes court.

[Imladrik]

Technological advances certainly played a part in this process too, especially in areas where dialected where similar or close to each other, thus favouring uniformisation.

Nevertheless it would have been possible for local dialects and French to cohabit side by side in Brittany or in Alsace for example. This is what happened in Germany for example, where local dialects are still reasonably strong today and in several parts of the United Kingdom. The official attitude in France towards regional languages has been and remains one of neglect. If not of outright comptempt in some circles.
The point I was trying to get across is that this could easily have become much more worse under different circumstances. Either under the guise of nationalism or under trhe guise of ideology/administrative efficiency. Harsher policies towards minority languages could have been implemented. 037771 explored something called lingualism in is We will Meet again timeline, an ideology aiming at complete linguistic uniformisation across nations, by persuasion or by force.

I think that dialects which are mutually intelligible with the majority dialect (for example Bavarian dialect with the dominating Hochdeutsch dialect) tend to resist uniformisation more easily than non-mutuallyintelligible dialects (patois). If you can be understood by anyone just by adopting some more common words, you will keep your dialect, but in the next generation, the dialect will be closer to the dominant dialect until the dialect die. But if it's a different language, you have to use a totally different language to communicate with the administration, at school, to watch the TV and so on. So a generation educated by teachers coming from the whole country with a standardised education and watching the TV in the same language will be less reluctant to speak this language than their parents.

An example from my familly : my maternal grandmother was attending the french school before the second world war and was trained by her teacher to go the Ecole Normale (where the teachers were trained), but during the occupation, French was banned and she lost a huge part of her skill in French as it was not spoken at home (where they spoked Alsatian) nor at school (where French and Alsatian were banned) and so after the war she couldn't go to the Ecole Normale. She can speak French but use more often Alsatian. My parents were longuer in school and grew up with the beginning of TV and mostly with the radio. They speak Alsatian (as they spoke it at their home with their parents) but use French all the time (and they have some difficulties understanding each other alsatian as it's not an unified language). And i understand only a bit of Alsatian, a lot of English due to the environment i grew up in (non-translated video games etc etc).

So i think if you want to kill a language, all you have to do his make the education longer, encourage geographic mobility in you country, especially between regions with different language, and keep the TV in one language. In two generation you're done.

Agreed on that, though Napoleon was very smart to get all the credit for this. Legal reforms were certainly needed, but they could perhaps have been carried out differently. Possibly by allowing for a certain degree of legal autonomy in the different regions of France. This eventually happened to a degree, since Alsace-Moselle has some laws which differ from the rest of the country.

I think that the laws of the Régime Local were more made to appease a region which declared it's independence before the reoccupation by the french army, and to buy peasants loyalty against the commies in Strasbourg by breaking the laicity. And i often wondered what a success of the federalist movement in the revolution would have done, especially with a France inside it's "natural frontier".

Making a centralising Empire work in the early nineteenth century context would be very hard indeed, since slow communications favour centrifugal forces and the devolution of power. Nevertheless if there is someone capable of trying this, it is Napoleon.

Yeah, he was mad enough to try, and he would certainly fall because of this.

I am not saying that you can't. I was rather pointing out that this is much more uncommon than it is in Britain and that in the eyes of some it can be very hard to concile a Breton or a Corsican identity with a French one. I might be very wrong in saying this, but it strikes me that in Alsace there is a lot of local pride in the fact that the region acts as a "bridge" between France and Germany which greatly helps in developing a layered identity.

My theory about Alsatian identity is that of a traumatized culture due to the frequent change of nationality, thus spreading a more french than the french identity in Alsace, leading to the domination of the Right in the regional politics.

Here we are down to the core of the problem, since ideological nation states are much more fragile than cultural nation states. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity means very different things to very different people. You can't build a nation on principles which don't mean the same thing to everyone, since it only creates a never ending debate on what these principles mean and how to best "achieve" them. In the case of a multinational French Empire (the French Empire of 1812 was multinational), fraternity could either be translated into the mutual respect and tolerance of each others languages, or be used to justify the imposition of a single language within the Empire boundaries since all of its citizens are "brothers".

Yet it managed to survive by being an ideological nation state.

France was and has always been a cultural nation-state ever since its fundation fifteen centuries ago. The Revolution is part of French history and of France's identity, but pre Revolution French history is longer than post Revolution French history. What made France, French, of which catholicism is an important part in my opinion (I say that as a non believer) has roots much deeper and much older than the Revolution itself.

But the problem with this conception of french history is the fact that most of the French territory have a longer history of being part of the French Republic than being part of the kingdom of France. Alsace was part of the french kingdom for 141 years before the revolution and 203 years since the revolution. It's even worse fore Nice or Savoy. And Catholicism is so important that only 8% of the self described catholic in France go to the mass, and half of the self described catholics declare to not believe in god, meaning they are educated as catholics but are in fact atheists or agnostics. And when you know that most catholic tradition are in fact pagan traditions, i really wonder if catholicism is so important in french history.

[Admiral Matt]

But the problem with this conception of french history is the fact that most of the French territory have a longer history of being part of the French Republic than being part of the kingdom of France. Alsace was part of the french kingdom for 141 years before the revolution and 203 years since the revolution. It's even worse fore Nice or Savoy. And Catholicism is so important that only 8% of the self described catholic in France go to the mass, and half of the self described catholics declare to not believe in god, meaning they are educated as catholics but are in fact atheists or agnostics. And when you know that most catholic tradition are in fact pagan traditions, i really wonder if catholicism is so important in french history.

Don't conflate the modern nation with the one at the same spot two centuries ago. While their were similarities, especially relative to the more intensely devout areas of Europe, the fact remains that most of the shift from piety is extremely modern.

[Julius Vogel]

I certainly think that a wider French Empire identity could have a serious attempt at success. The British did rather well for some time with the wider Imperial British identity across the colonies (White, rather than non White), with the latter only really being destroyed around the time of the Second World War.

[Dunois]

I think that dialects which are mutually intelligible with the majority dialect (for example Bavarian dialect with the dominating Hochdeutsch dialect) tend to resist uniformisation more easily than non-mutuallyintelligible dialects (patois). If you can be understood by anyone just by adopting some more common words, you will keep your dialect, but in the next generation, the dialect will be closer to the dominant dialect until the dialect die. But if it's a different language, you have to use a totally different language to communicate with the administration, at school, to watch the TV and so on. So a generation educated by teachers coming from the whole country with a standardised education and watching the TV in the same language will be less reluctant to speak this language than their parents.

It is also more of a two way process when dialects are mutually intelligible, words and expression from both sides will find their way over. Still uniformisation is even easier for mutually intelligible languages once the majority of the populace becomes literate.

Your family example is interesting, I can say the same about my own actually just replace Alsatian by Corsican. My grand father was educated in Corsican but he came to use French daily in his later job as a gendarme. My father spoke Corsican with his grandparents, but myself I only know a few words of the language, though the fact that the family moved to Paris played a part in this.

I think that the laws of the Régime Local were more made to appease a region which declared it's independence before the reoccupation by the french army, and to buy peasants loyalty against the commies in Strasbourg by breaking the laicity. And i often wondered what a success of the federalist movement in the revolution would have done, especially with a France inside it's "natural frontier".

Corsica also has different laws from mainland France in some areas actually, apparently because Napoleon himself decided so. One such differences is the fact that inheritance tax does not exist in Corsica.

Yet it managed to survive by being an ideological nation state.

To say that France under the Third, Fourth and early Fifth Republics was only an ideological nation state would be very wrong in my opinion. During all of them there was an expectation that in order to be French one had to speak French and to adhere fully to the cultural and historical patrimony of France of which Republican symbols were only one part and a tiny one at that. Had France been a fully ideological nation state, then the historiography of the time would have been very different, not harking back to "our ancestors the Gauls" among other things.
It is only during the 1930s onwards that some mainly on the left started to see France as a purely ideological nation state. Thence the delusions of having a "France of one hundred million Frenchmen" with regards to the colonies and the like. Something which continues to the present day and reached a pinnacle with the abandonment of assimilationist policies with regards to immigration in favour of integrationist ones. Yet the failure of these is for all to see in France. Why have these policies failed? Because as I have said liberty, equality, fraternity mean different things to different people. Whereas identification with nationhood symbols bathed in centuries old history means the same thing to everyone.

But the problem with this conception of french history is the fact that most of the French territory have a longer history of being part of the French Republic than being part of the kingdom of France. Alsace was part of the french kingdom for 141 years before the revolution and 203 years since the revolution. It's even worse fore Nice or Savoy. And Catholicism is so important that only 8% of the self described catholic in France go to the mass, and half of the self described catholics declare to not believe in god, meaning they are educated as catholics but are in fact atheists or agnostics. And when you know that most catholic tradition are in fact pagan traditions, i really wonder if catholicism is so important in french history.

Most of the French territory? I am sorry but that's patently wrong and forgets periods of French history where France was not a state based around revolutionary principles (as was the case during the Restoration and the Second Empire). Both Nice and especially Savoy have been French for much longer than 1860 on the basis of their culture and language. Savoy has never been part of any other cultural sphere but a French one, or if you want to be picky a Franco-Provencal one. Brittany has been a part of France since 1532 and was unarguably part of a "French sphere" well before that. Southern France has been part of France for even longer than that.
Catholicism for better or for worse has shaped France. It has shaped its institutions, its language, its people and the culture of France has a whole. Many traditions which you find in France but not else, of the top of my head I can already say the Galette des Rois (something unknown outside French speaking countries). Have unmistakable catholic origins. As De Gaulle said it quite well one day, "the Republic is secular but France is Catholic". The decline in religious attendance is only a very recent development, a wink of an eye in centuries of history and something which might change in the future.

[Imladrik]

It is also more of a two way process when dialects are mutually intelligible, words and expression from both sides will find their way over. Still uniformisation is even easier for mutually intelligible languages once the majority of the populace becomes literate.

Your family example is interesting, I can say the same about my own actually just replace Alsatian by Corsican. My grand father was educated in Corsican but he came to use French daily in his later job as a gendarme. My father spoke Corsican with his grandparents, but myself I only know a few words of the language, though the fact that the family moved to Paris played a part in this.

Yet in germany, Austro-bavarian is still very strong (12M speakers IIRC) because it is close to hochdeutsch. In france most of the patois dissappeared as they were useles fifty kilometers away from your village, and in a few regions you can still hear the peasants speaking in some sort of dialect midway from the French and the old local dialect, while in alsace or britanny, you hear Alsatian (or breton) or french, not a mix of the two (ok a little in Alsatian, because alsatian incorporate new words in French rather than in german)

Corsica also has different laws from mainland France in some areas actually, apparently because Napoleon himself decided so. One such differences is the fact that inheritance tax does not exist in Corsica.

Sometimes i wonder if Corsica is really french :p

To say that France under the Third, Fourth and early Fifth Republics was only an ideological nation state would be very wrong in my opinion. During all of them there was an expectation that in order to be French one had to speak French and to adhere fully to the cultural and historical patrimony of France of which Republican symbols were only one part and a tiny one at that. Had France been a fully ideological nation state, then the historiography of the time would have been very different, not harking back to "our ancestors the Gauls" among other things.

Yet, i know only french symbols of republican origins. And the "our ancestors the gauls" was part of an ideological plan to create revanchism against the germans after the franco-prussian war, which subsisted after the WWI (and a little before too, as Napoléon III tried to create a national symbol from vercingetorix). It was used to create an image of an always unified France, even in the Antiquity, by ignoring the history.

It is only during the 1930s onwards that some mainly on the left started to see France as a purely ideological nation state. Thence the delusions of having a "France of one hundred million Frenchmen" with regards to the colonies and the like. Something which continues to the present day and reached a pinnacle with the abandonment of assimilationist policies with regards to immigration in favour of integrationist ones. Yet the failure of these is for all to see in France. Why have these policies failed? Because as I have said liberty, equality, fraternity mean different things to different people. Whereas identification with nationhood symbols bathed in centuries old history means the same thing to everyone.

What is are the difference between an integrationist and an assimilationist policy ? And as always, the only symbols shared by all french are republican ones, not some older than the revolution. Frenchmens identifies with the motto Liberty, equality, fraternity, even if there are different interpretations.

Most of the French territory? I am sorry but that's patently wrong and forgets periods of French history where France was not a state based around revolutionary principles (as was the case during the Restoration and the Second Empire). Both Nice and especially Savoy have been French for much longer than 1860 on the basis of their culture and language. Savoy has never been part of any other cultural sphere but a French one, or if you want to be picky a Franco-Provencal one. Brittany has been a part of France since 1532 and was unarguably part of a "French sphere" well before that. Southern France has been part of France for even longer than that.

But the problem is that you consider France to be existent in it's modern form before the revolution. It was not. It was just different territories with different customs, tax, traditions, and languages, even religion sometimes. As you said before, in the south the Roman Law was predominant, while in the north the Common law was. The only thing that hold these territories together was the King. The revolution created the concept of a Nation-State, and created the concept of France, on ideological bases, to unify the different territories.

Catholicism for better or for worse has shaped France. It has shaped its institutions, its language, its people and the culture of France has a whole. Many traditions which you find in France but not else, of the top of my head I can already say the Galette des Rois (something unknown outside French speaking countries). Have unmistakable catholic origins. As De Gaulle said it quite well one day, "the Republic is secular but France is Catholic". The decline in religious attendance is only a very recent development, a wink of an eye in centuries of history and something which might change in the future.

Institutions ? Almost all the institutions came from the revolution or the gouvernments after it. The language ? i don't see where the religion have influenced the french language, could you explain ? And culture ? Even if it has shaped the culture, there is no unified french culture. Alsatian culture is different from Breton culture, which is different from provençal culture. And for De Gaulle, yeah, the French Right always tried to link France to catholicism, but if it is so, half of Alsace in not French. And here we see why the population of musulman origin isn't integrated : the Right keep saying that the roots of France are Christians, while the Left are claiming the universalist ideals of the Revolution

[Uriel]

So catholicism has no influence on modern France, but it is the reason that the muslims are not integrate?

[Imladrik]

So catholicism has no influence on modern France, but it is the reason that the muslims are not integrate?

It's the influence the Right want to give to catholicism who didn't encourage the muslims to be fully integrated (that and the promotion of communautarism by the Right and some part of the Left, the fact that the poor are unable to get out of the ghettos, institutionalised racism and a weak laicity policy.)

[Uriel]

It's the influence the Right want to give to catholicism who didn't encourage the muslims to be fully integrated (that and the promotion of communautarism by the Right and some part of the Left, the fact that the poor are unable to get out of the ghettos, institutionalised racism and a weak laicity policy.)

So catholicism has no influence on France but its strongest politcal group (the right) promotes it?

[I Blame Communism]

Speaking as someone deeply interested in Franco-British comparisons I can definitely say that France is A and Britain is B comparisons are not fully accurate. More often than not similarities between French and British history transcend differences and makes such comparisons harder. Heck we would not having this discussion if it was not for the fact that France and Britain are both lands which have historically been home to various "constituent peoples" so to speak. Something which is not true in the case of Germany for example (save for the Sorbs and Frisians, but these are tiny minorities).

I don't think you can have a really accurate understanding without looking at each case by itself - but then, that's true of everything. Comparisons are useful, and both the differences and similarities between British and French (and German or whatever) can be equally instructive.

In the case of Scots I think that we will find ourselves in agreement that the closeness of Scots to English as part of the same language family greatly helped such efforts. The spread of vernacular French across the oil language area was very much a fact as far back as the early nineteenth century. A fast spread made possible by the mutually intelligible nature of these various dialects. Both Scots and Yola are mutually intelligible with English so it does not take much to favour the dominance of a vernacular.

There was definitely a difference between the languages and dialects that were reasonably close to standard English and those that were not. It should be pointed out that there was huge rural-urban migration (including Scots and Welsh going to English cities as well as our own) and everybody who was part of that ended up speaking the urban vernacular English; but then, in Orkney we speak English, not Norn, but on Lewis they speak Gaelic, so the closeness of the languages certainly came into it.

I won't deny the huge influence of the church in the spread of English in Britain, church services in English really put a dent into the popularity of Cornish in Cornwall for example.

Definitely.

On the whole however you seem to confirm my impression that the spread of English across the British Isles was more due to semi neglect rather than through deliberate efforts. Deliberate efforts played a much greater part in spreading French in France, or Tuscan (Italian) in Italy.

I'd say that there was much less attempt to cultivate some sort of homogenous, newly-minted British nationhood than in those countries - Britishness remained a jumble-sale identity, and mixed up with older ones - but that doesn't mean the language regime wasn't pretty feirce.

[Imladrik]

So catholicism has no influence on France but its strongest politcal group (the right) promotes it?

If you can't understand that a political group have to promote several things (sometime divergent) to attract different part of the population (catholicism to attract the far left catholic groups, catholic roots to attract racist electors under-cover, work more to gain more to attract the popular class, less inheritance taxes to attract the upper class, etc etc), frankly i don't see the point of continuing this argument.

[I Blame Communism]

Care to teach me some Scots IBC, I quite like to use Scottish idioms when I speak actually. I use wee and folks a lot more than most people south of the border.

Lesson one: actually, its characteristically Scots to use "folk" only in the singular, as in "Folk are asking questions". :p;)

Scots Online (http://www.scots-online.org/) is good for grammar and pronunciation. An easy way to pick up a feel for Scots is to get a familiar text in the language (Lorimer's New Testament, for instance), and once you're starting to get confident, to try translating something.

My favourite Scots word: "clamjamfry", commotion. Generally, Scots words are less precise and graduated in their meaining than English ones - a lot more is left to context - but they have a very onomatapoeic quality. Mr favourite author in Scots: probablt Robert Garioch, although it's hard to find his work.

[Nivek]

With all the People Here give so quckly Rhineland to france? the main reason here(i need to read mr Hobsbawn Age of Revolution... if i can buy it,xd) was to noticed the special 'atributes' of Rheinland in the HRE contest(that explain how Prussia used to industrialize itself so quickly in the west...).

For me will be interesting to see a independant Rhineland(Prussia can recive either Belguim or the whole pre napoleon polish territory at exchange) with a native royal house or even further.. as a Republic in the German Confederation post napoleon defeat? how that gonna impact the first test of the Bund(some minor uprising, maybe if Prussia won Belgium, a Belgium revolution being it part of the Bund or a great Polish revolt?, and the most important.. 1848)

that is some i want to check.. more that if france is a culture or a ideology(is a mix of both...)

[Dunois]

Yet, i know only french symbols of republican origins. And the "our ancestors the gauls" was part of an ideological plan to create revanchism against the germans after the franco-prussian war, which subsisted after the WWI (and a little before too, as Napoléon III tried to create a national symbol from vercingetorix). It was used to create an image of an always unified France, even in the Antiquity, by ignoring the history.

The "our ancestors the Gauls" is clearly a mark of cultural and not ideological nationalism, it may indeed have been used as part of revanchist desires against the Prussians. The history was not ignored per se, since it is proven beyond doubt that most of the "structures" of present day France, including the urban network, the population substrate and most agricultural practices were already firmly established as far back as the Antiquity. Fernaud Braudel says that many times in his series of books titled the "Identity of France".

What is are the difference between an integrationist and an assimilationist policy ? And as always, the only symbols shared by all french are republican ones, not some older than the revolution. Frenchmens identifies with the motto Liberty, equality, fraternity, even if there are different interpretations.

Integration implies a mere adherence to the country laws and institutions but not loyalty to them. Nearly all of the 7/7 bombs where integrated into the United Kingdom, in the sense that they held steady relatively well paid jobs, were involved in their local community to an extent and never openly advocated the aims they held deep inside them. Yet they were not assimilated into the British nationaly community in the sense that they held no loyalty to it. Their loyalty was directed towards their extremist beliefs not towards the nation from which their passports came from, the United Kingdom.

If France turned into a Monarchy tomorrow, I doubt that all of a sudden the vast majority of the French populace would suddenly turn its back on their loyalty towards France.
The tricolor flag is not a republican symbol at all, it was designed by the revolutionarirs but don't forget that the white in the flag represent the monarchy itself. I would even go as far as saying that blue is a colour which has always been associated to France, French heraldry always had a lot more blue than English heraldry for example.
The Gallic rooster has origins dating as far back as Gaul itself and was already associated with France during the Middle Ages.
The Marseillaise is has royalist origins and is primarily a patriotic song and not a Republican song.
The only truly Republican symbols are Marianne and the Phrygian cap, symbols rarely used outside official circles and politicians.

But the problem is that you consider France to be existent in it's modern form before the revolution. It was not. It was just different territories with different customs, tax, traditions, and languages, even religion sometimes. As you said before, in the south the Roman Law was predominant, while in the north the Common law was. The only thing that hold these territories together was the King. The revolution created the concept of a Nation-State, and created the concept of France, on ideological bases, to unify the different territories.

France was already a nation state or if you prefer a proto nation state in 1789. Differences in customs, taxation, traditions and legislative systems are not an impediment to the creation of a nation state. Despite the huge differences between England and Scotland, Britain is a nation-state, the nation state of the British people. Same for Spain with the Basque and the Catalans. Loyalty to the king was a big factor in holding these territories together, but it was not the only one. For had it been the only one, France would have collapsed at some point during the Revolutionary period.
You also seems to be forgeting that centralisation and uniformisation would have happened even if the king had stayed in power sooner or later. Indeed, Louis XVI made several attempts at reforming the system during his reign.

Institutions ? Almost all the institutions came from the revolution or the gouvernments after it. The language ? i don't see where the religion have influenced the french language, could you explain ? And culture ? Even if it has shaped the culture, there is no unified french culture. Alsatian culture is different from Breton culture, which is different from provençal culture. And for De Gaulle, yeah, the French Right always tried to link France to catholicism, but if it is so, half of Alsace in not French. And here we see why the population of musulman origin isn't integrated : the Right keep saying that the roots of France are Christians, while the Left are claiming the universalist ideals of the Revolution

The catholic church has a huge impact in allowing these institutions to be created and the modern France to take shape. Would the Enlightenment have happened in a non Christian Europe? The answer in my opinion is now. We can see that for ourselves in the light of the fact that there was no Enlightenment in either China or the Muslim world.
Many expressions in the French language are derived from biblical references, not all of them by all means but a rather large number of them. Why is this the case? Simply because for a long time the Bible was the only book read by the majority of the population. Something which is bound to have a massive impact on a language.
There is a unified French culture above the regional culture of French, taking contributions from these regional cultures and mixing them all together. A massive one is obviously French cuisine, which takes the best of what every region has to offer. Another one would literature and the like. I would also say that there is such a thing as national French character to a degree, stubborness, yearning from freedom and a certain pride would be part of it.

The roots of France are partly Christian, not entirely Christian that's for sure but Christianity played a huge part in French history and I think that's its proper to acknowledge it. The fact that France is majority Christian/Catholic does not mean non Christian/Catholic populations are not welcome, or that they should forcibly be converted. I simply think that this heritage should be acknowledged as such, especialy as there are no reasons to be ashamed of it. This is not incompatible with the principles of Laïcité at all, since acknowledgment of this heritage does not imply a state funding of christianity/catholicism at all.
In any case France has strayed away to a degree from Laïcité during the last few decades, as there is a large amount of covert funding to mosque projets and the like from municipalities. This is something whom I deplore, as we are both favouring one group over another (something inegalitarian) and straying away from our principles (something morally wrong).

[Imladrik]

The "our ancestors the Gauls" is clearly a mark of cultural and not ideological nationalism, it may indeed have been used as part of revanchist desires against the Prussians. The history was not ignored per se, since it is proven beyond doubt that most of the "structures" of present day France, including the urban network, the population substrate and most agricultural practices were already firmly established as far back as the Antiquity. Fernaud Braudel says that many times in his series of books titled the "Identity of France".

The population substrate of France was already here before the Celts came in "France". Like almost all Europe, the population substrate in pre-indoeuropean, a thing we can see in the name of some places (mostly rivers). So our Ancestors the Gauls is totally false, as we could say our ancestors the Romans, the Franks, the Burgundian and so on. The gauls had already an urban network, but the Romans greatly expanded it. So for me the "our Ancestors the Gauls" is clearly an ideological invention to unite the Nation against the Evil Germans. It's also a clear rejection of the Monarchy and Catholicism as before the revolution, the origin of France was dated back to the Baptism of Clovis.

If France turned into a Monarchy tomorrow, I doubt that all of a sudden the vast majority of the French populace would suddenly turn its back on their loyalty towards France.
The tricolor flag is not a republican symbol at all, it was designed by the revolutionarirs but don't forget that the white in the flag represent the monarchy itself. I would even go as far as saying that blue is a colour which has always been associated to France, French heraldry always had a lot more blue than English heraldry for example.
The Gallic rooster has origins dating as far back as Gaul itself and was already associated with France during the Middle Ages.
The Marseillaise is has royalist origins and is primarily a patriotic song and not a Republican song.
The only truly Republican symbols are Marianne and the Phrygian cap, symbols rarely used outside official circles and politicians.

The French tricolor appeared when Lafayette incorporated white on the Cocarde of the Parisian Guard to have the same colors as the USA and the UK (which were considered t obe beacons of Liberty at the time). The white was only associated with monarchy later, as there is no trace of this association during the revolutionnary period. And it was so not a Republican symbol that the Legitimist Heir in 1871 refused to accept the throne due to the flag.
For the gallic rooster is even less used than the Phrygian cap and Marianne, and it is not of a gallic origin, but of latin origin during the early middle age due to the similarity between Gallus (the inhabitants of Gaul) and gallus (the rooster). It was then appropriated by the king of France as a symbol of catholicism, forgotten and after the revolution recreated as a symbol of the Gauls (again to give an earlier origin to France than the Baptism of Clovis).
The Marseillaise is a song of republican origin. It was composed in Strasbourg in 1792 for the Army (chant de guerre de l'Armée du Rhin), and it was popularised by the Fédérés of Marseille when they came to Paris. And it was banned under Louis XVIII, Napoléon I, and Napoléon III, it was used in the 1848 Revolution, in the Commune de Paris in 1871 and it was used by the Socialist International before the Internationale. So much for the royalist origin.
And i don't think France will become a monarchy again. I think that the republican system has far more future than the constitutionnal Monarchy (it will be funny to see what will happen when Elisabeth die, especially if Charles isn't dead)


France was already a nation state or if you prefer a proto nation state in 1789. Differences in customs, taxation, traditions and legislative systems are not an impediment to the creation of a nation state. Despite the huge differences between England and Scotland, Britain is a nation-state, the nation state of the British people. Same for Spain with the Basque and the Catalans. Loyalty to the king was a big factor in holding these territories together, but it was not the only one. For had it been the only one, France would have collapsed at some point during the Revolutionary period.
You also seems to be forgeting that centralisation and uniformisation would have happened even if the king had stayed in power sooner or later. Indeed, Louis XVI made several attempts at reforming the system during his reign.

Yet there is no independance movement in France as strong as those in Scotland, Catalogne or the Spanish pays Basque. And France nearly collapsed during the revolutionnary era due to the Federalist revolt, before the centralisation efforts of the Jacobin.

The catholic church has a huge impact in allowing these institutions to be created and the modern France to take shape. Would the Enlightenment have happened in a non Christian Europe? The answer in my opinion is now. We can see that for ourselves in the light of the fact that there was no Enlightenment in either China or the Muslim world.

My answer is yes, as enlightenment is a consequence of the Renaissance and the rediscovery of classical texts in greek. For the muslim world i really don't know much about it during this era, but for china, the absence of Enlightenment is more likely due to the isolationnist and reactionnary-on-steroid policies of the Qing dynasty.

Many expressions in the French language are derived from biblical references, not all of them by all means but a rather large number of them. Why is this the case? Simply because for a long time the Bible was the only book read by the majority of the population. Something which is bound to have a massive impact on a language.
There is a unified French culture above the regional culture of French, taking contributions from these regional cultures and mixing them all together. A massive one is obviously French cuisine, which takes the best of what every region has to offer. Another one would literature and the like. I would also say that there is such a thing as national French character to a degree, stubborness, yearning from freedom and a certain pride would be part of it.

But nobody read the Bible, as nobody spoke Latin (nobody in the sense of the common people), and i don't know many expressions derived from Biblical references. For the "unified" French Culture, you mean the Parisian culture which effectively mixed them together due to Paris being the center of France (political, cultural, economical). And for French cuisine, it is very recent, two generations ago, the cuisine was still local. And don't forget that the national meal is the Couscous, which can be dated back to the end of the Algerian War.

The roots of France are partly Christian, not entirely Christian that's for sure but Christianity played a huge part in French history and I think that's its proper to acknowledge it. The fact that France is majority Christian/Catholic does not mean non Christian/Catholic populations are not welcome, or that they should forcibly be converted. I simply think that this heritage should be acknowledged as such, especialy as there are no reasons to be ashamed of it. This is not incompatible with the principles of Laïcité at all, since acknowledgment of this heritage does not imply a state funding of christianity/catholicism at all.
In any case France has strayed away to a degree from Laïcité during the last few decades, as there is a large amount of covert funding to mosque projets and the like from municipalities. This is something whom I deplore, as we are both favouring one group over another (something inegalitarian) and straying away from our principles (something morally wrong).

Yes there is a lot of things to be ashamed of (i'm not, because i don't consider myself to have any form of christian heritage), like Wars or Religion, the crusades etc etc. And one of the principles of Laicity is that the State don't aknowledge any religion. And if you think the funding of mosque by the municipalities (not the State) is bad (a phenomenon greatly exagerated), what do you think of the aknowledgement of the diploms delivered by the Catholic Church, the acceptance of a religious distinction by the President, the presence at the beatification of Karol Wojtyła of the Prime Minister, the toleration of illegal occupation of churches by fundamentalist catholic groups, etc, etc.