Regionalism and the state in France and Prussia

Abstract

Prussia and France have been associated with the absolutist expansion of monarchical authority and the evolution of a heavily centralised and interventionist state structure. Drawing on revisionist work in the two historiographies, this article explores the meanings of ‘region’ in both cases, with some surprising results. French regionalism has often been seen as fundamentally antagonistic to the pretensions of the centralising state. Yet the authors suggest that French regionalists increasingly moulded their reflections on culture and the state in a modern, republican context. The state responded in subtle ways: the relationship was thus marked by a higher degree of reciprocity than has often been acknowledged. The structure of the Prussian kingdom was, initially for historical and later for ideological reasons, less centralised than the traditional view would allow. This relatively fragmented and decentralised system created the space for a complex and highly adaptable relationship between the region, the province, the state and the nation. The picture that emerges forces us to rethink some key assumptions about the political cultures of France and Prussia, but also highlights some commonalities in the European experience of regionalism.

Keywords:

• regionalism
• France
• Prussia
• political history
• cultural history

Notes

 1. This revisionist line has been especially developed by Chanet, L'école républicaine et les petites patries; and Gasnier, “Le local.”

 2. The key personality in this connection was Joseph Paul-Boncour, a moderate socialist whose doctoral dissertation, Le fédéralisme économique, sought to connect regionalist theory with syndicalist theory, in a study of French jurisprudence that argued for the need to undo the social legislation of the Revolutionary period. Paul-Boncour attracted widespread acclaim, from Millerand and Waldeck-Rousseau at home to thinkers such as Harold Laski abroad.

 3. Jean Charles-Brun, founder of the Fédération Régionaliste Française, published a study of Proudhon as part of a new edition of the latter's Du principe fédératif.

 4. Giocanti, Charles Maurras, félibre .

 5. Pierre Rosanvallon's ongoing study of French democracy and political forms has produced a host of suggestive insights for the study of the French state and the way in which it was conceptualised in the nineteenth century. See in particular his recent work Le modèle politique français.

 6. See Wright, The Regionalist Movement in France, 3–17.

 7. See Hazareesingh, “Vincent Wright and the Jacobin Legacy in historical and theoretical perspective,” 1–20; Thiesse, Ecrire la France.

 8. For a particularly critical view of the Félibrige, written by a commentator who was concerned with its failure to develop a strong political side, see Laffont, La revendication occitane. The best general overview of the Félibrige is Philippe Martel's overview “Le Félibrige,” for Nora's collection Les lieux de mémoire, vol. III, 3515–54. English commentaries include Robert Gildea's wide-angle study of regionalism in The Past in French History , ch. 4 “Regionalism” (see esp. 180–182 for the Félibrige); and Caroline Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France. Throughout this section, the reader is referred to chs 1 and 2 of The Regionalist Movement in France.

 9. One of many important contributions to the study of regionalism and commercialism is that of Philip Whalen: see in particular Gaston Roupnel. The role of regionalist and folklorist identity construction in the 1930s has been studied by Shanny Peer, in France on Display.

10. The regionalist leader Jean Charles-Brun reconceptualised the concept of ‘latinité’ in connection with Mistral in a series of articles published in 1918 in an ephemeral journal called L'Action latine.

11. Mistral to Charles-Brun, September 9, 1903, cited in Wright, The Regionalist Movement, 46.

12. Jean Hennessy, an independent socialist and wealthy backer of many regionalist endeavours, formed a ‘Société Proudhon’ in the 1920s which participated in propaganda for the League of Nations.

13. The only recent published study of Ricard that we are aware of is a literary study of his poetry: Carbasse, Louis-Xavier de Ricard, félibre rouge. Charles-Brun himself contributed to a short but important study of him in provençal, En Memoria de Louvis-Saviè de Ricard ( 1843 –1911). There have been two recent dissertations on Ricard: Moulain, “Louis-Xavier de Ricard, théoricien de l'istoire, du fédéralisme, et de la République sociale”; Wink, “Poets and Communards”.

14. The moderate politician Emile de Marcère published a study of these issues, emanating from the concern for regionalism in middle-of-the-road Republican circles: La décentralisation.

15. For an extended study of the FRF and its journal, see Wright, The Regionalist Movement, chs 6 and 7.

16. These important formative stages of Charles Maurras's career have been impressively studied by Victor Nguyen, Aux origins de l'Action française. See also Cottez, Frédéric Amouretti; Charles-Brun, Le Régionalisme, appendix.

17. Fourié, “Le Félibrige parisien et la déclaration fédéraliste de 1892.”

18. Zeev Sternhell's study, Maurice Barrès et le nationalisme français remains an essential reference point for this complex issue, in spite of the fact that we may dispute some of his wider conclusions.

19. In a speech at Saint-Chamond during the election campaign of 1910, Briand declared that he would, in the future, incline towards the creation of vast regions as an essential part of reforming the political framework of the Republic. See Wright, “Social reform, state reform and Aristide Briand's moment of hope in France, 1909–10.”

20. Between 1900 and 1903, Ricard contributed a series of articles to Le Figaro under a general rubric designed to introduce regionalist debate into this important centrist Republican journal.

21. The standard work on mortalities is still Franz, Der dreissigjährige Krieg und das deutsche Volk; on the Prussian lands, see 17–21.

22. Clark, Iron Kingdom, 427–35.

23. See Hagen, Germans, Poles and Jews; Baske, “Praxis und Prinzipien der preußischen Polenpolitik vom Beginn der Reaktionszeit bis zur Gründung des Deutschen Reiches”; Kossert, Masuren.

24. See Neugebauer, Politischer Wandel im Osten, 65–86.

25. Vierhaus, “Preußen und seine Provinzen,” here 350.

26. Wex, Staatliche Bürokratie und städtische Autonomie. Entstehung, Einführung und Rezeption des Revidierten Städteordnung von 1831 in Westfalen; Pabst, “Die preußischen Wallonen”; Friedrichs, Das niedere Schulwesen im linksrheinischen Herzogtum Kleve 1614 –1816; Forstreuter, “Die Anfänge der Sprachstatistik in. Preußen und ihre Ergebnisse zur Litauerfrage,” 329–52; id., Die deutsche Kulturpolitik im sogenanten Preussisch-Litauen ; Green, “The federal alternative?”; comment on East Prussia as a Land is cited in Schieder, “Partikularismus und nationales Bewußtsein im Denken des Vormärz,” here 20.

27. Mergel, Zwischen Klasse und Konfession. Katholisches Bürgertum im Rheinland, 1794–1914; Woesler, “Westfälische Literatur und Reichsidee im 19. Jahrhundert,” here 326–7.

28. Jürgensen, “Die Eingliederung der Herzogtümer Schleswig, Holstein und Lauenburg in das preussische Königreich”; Hauser, Staatliche Einheit und nationale Vielfalt in Preußen; id., Preussische Staatsräson und nationaler Gedanke ; Aschoff, “Die welfische Bewegung und die Deutsch-Hannoversche Partei zwischen 1866 und 1914.”

29. Kunz, Verortete Geschichte, 312–22; on the interchangeability of local, regional and national concepts of Heimat, see Confino, “Federalism and the Heimat Idea in Nineteenth-Century Germany”; id., The Nation as Local Metaphor ; Applegate, A Nation of Provincials.

30. Freiligrath and Schücking, Das malerische und romantische Westphalen. On these themes see also Woesler, “Westfälische Literatur,” 322; Heselhaus, “Die Autoren des ‘malerischen und romantischen Westphalen’.”

31. Theodor Fontane to Heinrich von Mühler, Berlin, 2 December 1863, in Fontane, Briefe, vol. 2 (Munich, 1979), 110–11.

32. Fontane, “Preußens Zukunft,” Berliner Zeitungshalle, August 31, 1848, reprinted in Holles, ed., Theodor Fontane, Politik und Geschichte, 445–6; see also Attwood, Fontane und das Preussentum, 15–30; Gerhard Friedrich, Fontanes preußische Welt.

33. Laing, Notes of a Traveller on the Social and Political State of France , Prussia, Switzerland, Italy and other Parts of Europe during the Present Century, 67.

34. This was articulated in particular detail by the independent socialist Joseph Paul-Boncour, and is a recurrent theme in his memoirs, Entre deux guerres, for example vol. I, 146–9.

35. Taine, Carnets de voyage.

36. On the confessional dimension, see Krey, “Kommunikation in der Region: Kulturelles Milieu um 1850,” esp. 306.

37. See Kaiser, Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union.