Nobility Reimagined: The Patriotic Nation in Eighteenth-Century France

The mature nationalism that fueled the French Revolution grew from patriotic sensibilities fostered over the course of a century or more. Jay M. Smith proposes that the French thought their way to nationhood through a process of psychic adjustment premised on the reimagining of nobility, a social category and moral concept that had long dominated the cultural horizons of the old regime.

Nobility Reimagined follows the elaboration of French patriotism across the eighteenth century and highli...