scholarly journals National sovereignty in the political doctrine of Front National/Rassemblement National

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-60
Author(s):  
Adam Wielomski

The État-nation (Nation-State) doctrine is the main ideology of the French Revolution and subsequent revolutionary tradition, but the contemporary French left and liberal centre are pro-Euro-peans and hostiles to idea of Nation-State. The whole spectrum of French political elite reject the idea of nation and Nation-State as “reactionary” and “undemocratic”. In France, the idea of État-na-tion is defended by the nationalist right only, symbolised by the Le Pen’s family. The purpose of this text is to present this genetically-leftist idea as the programme of the political right.

2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 303-321
Author(s):  
Lode Wils

In het tweede deel van zijn bijdrage 1830: van de Belgische protonatie naar de natiestaat, over de gebeurtenissen van 1830-1831 als slotfase van een passage van de Belgische protonatie doorheen de grote politiek-maatschappelijke en culturele mutaties na de Franse Revolutie, ontwikkelt Lode Wils de stelling dat de periode 1829-1830 de "terminale crisis" vormde van het Koninkrijk der Verenigde Nederlanden. Terwijl koning Willem I definitief had laten verstaan dat hij de ministeriële verantwoordelijkheid definitief afwees en elke kritiek op het regime beschouwde als kritiek op de dynastie, groeide in het Zuiden de synergie in het verzet tussen klerikalen, liberalen en radicale anti-autoritaire groepen. In de vervreemding tussen het Noorden en het Zuiden en de uiteindelijke revolutionaire nationaal-liberale oppositie vanuit het Zuiden, speelde de taalproblematiek een minder belangrijke rol dan het klerikale element en de liberale aversie tegen het vorstelijk absolutisme van Willem I en de aangevoelde uitsluiting van de Belgen uit het openbaar ambt en vooral uit de leiding van de staat.________1830: from the Belgian pre-nation to the nation stateIn the second part of his contribution 1830: from the Belgian pre-nation to the nation state, dealing with the events from 1830-1831 as the concluding phase of a transition of the Belgian pre-nation through the major socio-political and cultural mutations after the French Revolution, Lode Wils develops the thesis that the period of 1829-1830 constituted the "terminal crisis" of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands. Whilst King William I had clearly given to understand that he definitively rejected ministerial responsibility and that he considered any criticism of the regime as a criticism of the dynasty, the synergy of resistance increased between the clericalists, liberals and radical anti-authoritarian groups in the South. In the alienation between the North and the South and the ultimate revolutionary national-liberal opposition from the South the language issue played a less important role than the clericalist element and the liberal aversion against the royal absolutism of William I and the sense of exclusion of the Belgians from public office and particularly from the government of the state.


Author(s):  
James Livesey

This chapter focuses on the French Revolution as one of the most important moments in the entangled history of local cosmopolitanisms. Such ideas as rights, property, and democracy were consciously articulated during the Revolution as universals with cosmopolitan spheres of application, and those ideas had profound global consequences over the following two centuries. Alongside this impact on states and legal structures, the Revolution also had direct effects in every community in France and touched communities outside the hexagon, from India to Ireland. The Revolution transformed the most general contexts, putting the nation-state rather than empire as the organizing principle at the heart of the international order, but it also put the most intimate experiences, such as family and emotion, under new light. The drama of the Revolution exemplified the power of ideas and the ambition to create a rational political order.


Author(s):  
Thomas P. Anderson

This chapter explores a concept of the nation-state defined in terms of leagues, friendships, and amity between England and France in King John. The play consistently describes the evolving relationship between nations in terms of friendship and hospitality. Constance’s desperate question, ‘France friend with England! What becomes of me?’ (2.2.35) after the rival nations become momentary allies, captures the challenge that national sovereignty poses to a subject’s liberty. In its depiction of this geo-political friendship, King John interrogates the powerful claims of an emerging bureaucratic network of authority exemplified by the Bastard’s relationship with what the play calls ‘borrowed majesty’ (1.1.4) and ‘perjured kings’ (3.1.33). In arguing that King John makes explicit the political condition of friendship in depicting rival nation-states, the chapter makes the case that the Bastard’s new sovereign relationship radically redefines a political subject as a bawd or broker in a bureaucratic network with radical, albeit unrealized, political potential. The Bastard—a bureaucrat with royal blood—is well aware that his fugitive survival and political efficacy are contingent on how he responds to the unintended contours of the sovereign decision, to its collateral effects that exceed ordered and absolute power, in other words, to that which allows him to act legitimately, with bureaucratic sovereignty, both inside and outside of the law.


2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 322-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Epstein

AbstractThis article examines key themes in the political and intellectual life of E. P. Thompson. It argues for the centrality of romanticism to his work; it focuses on his unfinished study of the early Romantics. Thompson drew parallels between socialist hopes and disappointments of his own day and the reactions of the early romantic poets to the failed promise of the French Revolution. This article charts the trajectory of the early Romantics as they moved from political engagement to retreat, and relates this trajectory to Thompson's own politics. Thompson discerned a pattern whereby intellectuals and artists moved through stages from political engagement to disenchantment and then to “apostasy” or default. Disenchantment could be a productive condition; at issue was how the poet handled the “authenticity of experience,” how disenchantment was dealt with in verse. Both Thompson and the Romantics privileged the concept of “experience” which they set in opposition to abstract theory. The article's final section turns to themes that Thompson had intended to address but left unfinished, including shifting views of patriotism and the defeated cause of women's rights. For Thompson the romantic impulse was ultimately linked to utopian desire, to the capacity to imagine that which is “not yet.”


Author(s):  
Julian Swann

Between the assassination of Henri IV in 1610 and the French Revolution of 1789, thousands of French nobles, including members of the royal family, courtiers, bishops, generals, and judges suffered internal exile, imprisonment, or even death for having displeased their sovereign. For most that punishment was independent of the legal system and was the result of a simple royal command or a written order, known as a lettre de cachet. Yet rather than protest, the victims were willing to obey, spending months, even years in disgrace without any knowledge of when, or even if, their ordeal would end. Their punishment was for many a terrible personal blow, striking at the heart of their own identity and relationship to the king, and it threatened the future of their families, friends, and political allies. This book is the first in-depth study of political disgrace, which was intrinsic to the exercise of royal power, drawing on the mystique of monarchy and the ideologies of divine right, patriarchy, and justice that underpinned royal authority. It explores the rise and consolidation of a new model of disgrace amongst the nobility for which obedience to the king gradually replaced the rebellious attitudes fostered during the years of religious and civil strife. Yet for all the power of royal disgrace, it was always open to challenge and in the course of the eighteenth century it would come under a sustained attack that tells us much about the political and cultural origins of the French Revolution.


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