The heart of the nation: fraternal love and nation-building in the histories of Jules Michelet

Abstract

In A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution , Mona Ozouf notes that the fi rst two com-ponents in the famous revolutionary slogan liberté , égalité , fraternité represent a demand for rights, while the third is a moral obligation. The cry for fraternité has various interpret-ations – Is it expressing a right to rebellion? A sentiment that is a necessary precursor to liberté and égalité ? She notes that this third component of the slogan was a late addition; it only fi rst appeared in the Constitution of 1791 (1989, 716). Fraternity does seem to be a necessary component in many de fi nitions of the term nation . Benedict Anderson famously de fi ned it by using the idea of an imagined community : “ … it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship ” (1983, 6). A century earlier Ernst Renan in What is a Nation? de fi ned it as “ a vast solidarity ” (2018, 261). In both de fi nitions the nation is a creation of the imagination, a construct based on idealized bonds of a ff ection for imagined fellow citizens. The nineteenth-century French historian Jules Michelet especially emphasizes the role of fraternité in building the French nation. In his vision, the ideal political entity is the nation-state, a convergence of the machinery and laws of the state with the warm and personal fraternal bonds that hold together the nation. The French Revolution reaches its apogee when nation – “ la grande amitié qui contient tous les autres ” (Michelet 1974, 199) [the great friendship that contains all the others] – converges with the impersonal political power of the state. 1 France is unique in Michelet ’ s thought because it is the fi rst country to achieve this new status of nation-state. Fraternity is the means as well as the ends of this process, and fraternal love is an active force that creates and