Inventing the modern region
Basque identity and the French nation-state
By Talitha Ilacqua
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- Format: Hardcover
- ISBN: 978-1-5261-6925-9
- Pages: 272
- Price: £85.00
- Published Date: February 2024
- Series: Studies in Modern French and Francophone History
Description
This book explores the process by which the French Basque country acquired a folkloric regional identity in the long nineteenth century. It argues that, despite its origins in pre-modern customs, this stereotypical identity was invented as part of France's process of nation-building. The abolition of privileges in 1789 prompted a new interest in local culture as the defining feature of provincial France, shaping the transition from the pre-'modern' province to the 'modern' region. The relationship between the region and the nation, however, was difficult. Regional culture favoured the integration of the French Basque provinces into the French nation-state but also challenged the authority of the central state. As a result, Basque region-building reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the unitary model of French nationhood, in the nineteenth century as well as today.
Contents
Introduction: region- and nation-building in nineteenth-century Europe
1 Adapting the Revolution
2 Basque soldiers in a French nation
3 Liberty, liberties and legitimism in the First Carlist War
4 Euskara or the spirit of the Basque nation
5 Inventing a Basque literary tradition
6 Euskara or challenges to the French nation
7 'The other within': ideas of progress and decline in Basque travel writing
8 Reversing the 'tourist gaze'
Conclusion: a Basque region in a French nation
Index
Author
Talitha Ilacqua is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at Yale University and the University of Venice