Some analysts of military affairs have lately argued that the world is seeing the rise of"fourth-generation warfare," an emergence of significant non-state military actors whose confrontation with formal government will challenge the very legitimacy of the state. Such"warfare" doesn't always look like the kinds of activity we associate with that word. At the website Defense and the National Interest, the deeply conservative (and highly provocative) writer William Lind finds in the recent riots in France a perfect example of the"4GW" phenomenon:"Here we find ourselves peering over the crater of the Fourth Generation volcano directly into its heart, the transfer of primary loyalties away from the state."

What's remarkable, in the coverage of the riots, is how little anyone has noted the historically recent nature of those loyalties to the state. I'm thinking in particular of Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen, which depicted a 19th-century France in which many nominally French peasants spoke provincial languages, knew no French at all, and paid little attention (and little money) to the central French administration. I'm not trained in French history, read very little in the field, and am several thousands of miles away from my copy of Weber's book, so my discussion here will be awfully limited. But isn't the jealous protection of putatively French culture by the French state -- such as the much-noted practice of teaching every child in France that their ancestors were Gauls -- a likely product of the tenuousness, the historical recentness, of the very idea of"French culture" or a shared loyalty to the French state?

Ralph E. Luker - 11/12/2005

Jon speaks for us all, Chris. I'm looking forward to your safe return to the States.

Jonathan Dresner - 11/12/2005

No apology necessary. Safe travels!

Chris Bray - 11/12/2005

Thanks for the comments above -- I'm on the way to the airport very soon for a long trip overseas, and so have to bow out of the discussion. My apologies, and thanks again.

Andrew D. Todd - 11/12/2005

Odd point, linguists talk about things such as language clines. That is, in the original state, there was no sharp distinction between French, Spanish, and Italian. They sort of shaded off into each other. Only in the nineteenth century were the languages created by standardizing around Paris dialect, Castillian, and Tuscan. For that matter, there are linguists such as John Gumperz who do "ethnography of speaking," that is, they talk not about languages per se, but about the linguistic repertoire of individuals and local communities. For example, if, circa 1800, you proceeded from Paris to Berlin, you would find a decreasing percentage of people who understood Northern French, and an increasing percentage who understood North German, with a massive overlap in the middle.

Nathanael D. Robinson - 11/12/2005

Chris,

I studied with Weber fifteen years ago, and I tend to think that I know his work better than most people. Peasants into Frenchmen has been interpreted variously by those who date the origins of nationality/national identity to various periods. Indeed, he has been criticized by cultural historians who want to push national consciousness back into earlier periods. They disagree with the moderness of his periodization (as well as his impressionism): that the Third Republic, rather arduously, achieved a common citizen out of a heterogeneous mass of subjects. Furthermore, Weber gave more credit to the peasants themselves in "choosing" to become Frenchmen than his critics are willing to admit.

That said, the French state has seen itself as the vehicle par extraordinaire of nationalization. It is not the ethnic origins that bind them together, but the adhesion to a common set of value and behaviors that have their origins in Celto-Roman civilization. Civilization is something to which the individual must aspire. Consequently, the assimilation of "immigrants" (who are not all immigrants, but non-European descent) is always in question. Furthermore, the equation of Frenchness (as nationality and identity) with republican ideals ignores the prejudices of the Frenchmen of European descent, their ethnic and religious ideals.

The idea of France is quite recent, and I would date it to the Third Republic (if not the second empire), because it has picked up defining ideas along the way. On paper the republic aspired to be inclusive. But in truth it demanded people make changes to themselves before they could be accepted completely.

(This is all I can write now ... perhaps I'll respond more tomorrow.)

Ralph E. Luker - 11/12/2005

This strikes me as a really good question, Chris. The way you put it also points to parallels that one could draw with Germany, Italy, and even, perhaps, with these United States in the 19th century. In each case, the nation/state has an obvious interest in magnifying national identity.