Perfecting the nation: Enlightenment perspectives on the coincidence of linguistic and ‘national’ refinement

Abstract

This article describes the correlation between language and nation in Enlightenment thought and its perceived value as a means to pursue investigations aimed at deciphering the ‘rules of social evolution’. In doing so, it further clarifies the manner in which ‘the nation’ was represented in contemporary texts, lending much-needed empirical support to recent overtures in this direction by scholars who have challenged the validity of temporally and spatially fixed ideal types. Dictionaries and other lexicographical works are used to illuminate the semantic traditions underlying the correlations cited above and the fitness more generally of ‘the nation’ for the anthropological pursuits of the period. The study is then extended to a survey of contemporary works of history, natural philosophy and other episteme, the texts under review supplying further testimony of a theoretical perspective in which nation, ‘manners’ and language were not only connected, but deemed to be in a relationship of coterminous perfectibility. This theoretical outlook explains, in conclusion, why endeavours aimed at linguistic refinement were explicitly identified as ‘national’ undertakings by Enlightenment-era reformers, providing, in turn, important historical context for one prominent stream of nineteenth-century nationalist discourse.

Keywords:

• Enlightenment
• national character
• language
• French Revolution

Acknowledgements

I thank Professor Jeffrey Burson of Georgia Southern University and the members of the English Atlantic Writing Group of Loyola University Chicago for their comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. My thanks also to the editors and reviewers of the journal for their many valuable suggestions.

Notes

1. Rousseau’s Essai sur l’origine des langues published posthumously in 1781. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes de J.J. Rousseau, XIX, 215.

2. “The ‘nation’ so considered,” he added, “was the body of citizens whose collective sovereignty constituted them a state which was their political expression.” Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 18–19. Examples of this rendering can be found in works of jurisprudence, such as Vattel’s Le droit des gens and political tracts from the English-speaking world. See, for example, Trenchard, Cato’s Letters; Adams, The Works of John Adams, 496, 499–501; Paine, Collected Writings, 42.

3. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 20.

4. For Todorova, references to false dichotomies continue to appear “not only in political and journalistic parlance, but also in academic writings.” Todorova, "Is There Weak Nationalism?" According to these typologies, she adds, “the American and the French belong to a noble, civic and moderate variety”, and East Europeans to “the bloody subspecies of the unsavory and organic ... ethnic nationalism.” Ibid., 682. Similar remarks in Benner, “Nationalism: Intellectual Origins,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism, 37. See also the editor John Breuilly’s comments in the introduction of the same volume. Ibid., 2–3; Hirschi, The Origins of Nationalism, xi, 18 (see also Kitromilides’s review of Hirschi’s Origins in Nations and Nationalism for similar observations. Hirschi’s critique is particularly aimed at Hobsbawm and Anderson’s Imagined Communities, neither of which give sufficient attention to major preoccupations of eighteenth-century thought, such as those concerning national character described below; this critique also holds for Kedourie’s Nationalism. Kedourie’s discussion on language and nation relies heavily on German sources of later vintage (e.g., Fichte); one also obtains little sense of how the ideas attributed to these thinkers were abundantly present in French and British letters. Kedourie, Nationalism, 60–4. Note finally the recent comments of Hroch, who has characterized one recent work as an act of “atonement” for his previous underestimation of eighteenth-century cultural developments. Hroch, “Why Did They Begin?”

5. Previous critiques of this “dichotomy,” especially associated with the work of earlier scholars such as Kohn (e.g., The Idea of Nationalism), include Kuzio, “The Myth of the Civic State;” Brubaker, “The Manichean Myth;” Baycroft and Hewitson, “Introduction” in What is a Nation? Europe 1789–1914, 3–4, 7–8. See also Baycroft’s piece for notes on how the “civic” character of French revolutionary discourse gained precedence in later historiography. Baycroft, “France, Ethnicity and the Revolutionary Tradition,” in Baycroft and Hewitson, What is a Nation?, 28–34. As these authors suggest, there remains a surprising shortage of empirical works documenting how the nation was spoken of during this period or implicated in contemporary debates. Ahmed Slimani’s La modernité du concept de nation au XVIIIe siècle represents an important advance in correcting this deficit.

6. Some of the main lines of enquiry associated with the idea of “progress” are described in Heffernan, “Historical Geographies of the Future,” 125–64, and Outram, The Enlightenment.

7. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc. (1755), V: 637.

8. As Bell wrote: “In the eighteenth century, the literature on national differences and national character grew to massive and unprecedented dimensions.” Bell, The Cult of the Nation, 143–4; Romani, National Character and Public Spirit.

9. Morrissey, “The Encyclopédie,” 156.

10. Jedlicki, A Suburb of Europe, 3–9.

11. Godechot, “Nation, patrie, nationalisme et patriotisme.”

12. Important precursors include the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1612) and Furetière’s Dictionnaire universel (1690).

13. Dictionnaire de l’Academie Francoise (1694), II, 110.

14. Ibid. “Mœurs” later supplanted “virtues and vices.” Dictionnaire de l’Academie Francoise, 2 vols. (1762) II, 197.

15. Bell, Cult of the Nation, 143; Hirschi, Origins of Nationalism, 39; Leerssen, National Thought in Europe, 20–2.

16. Montesquieu’s “nations” were similarly distinguished by “temperaments” while embodying facets of political and cultural historicity. Montesquieu, Oeuvres de M. de Montesquieu, II, 209–52. See also Vico, The First New Science (first published in 1725), 67.

17. Nouveau Dictionnaire de L’Academie Francoise (1718), II, 121. This passage retained in the 1740 (II, 177), 1762 (II, 197) and 1798 (II, 148) editions. See also, Le Guern, “Le mot Nation,” 162–4.

18. Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, II, 34.

19. Kenrick, A New Dictionary of the English Language; Barclay, A Complete and Universal English Dictionary on a New Plan; Ash, The New and Complete Dictionary of the Language, II, 3.

20. “Each nation has a particular character, and it is a kind of proverb to say, light as a Frenchman, jealous as an Italian, serious as a Spaniard ...” Chambers, Cyclopaedia, II, 616; Encyclopédie (1765), XI: 36. See also “caractèr des nations” in Encyclopédie (1752), II, 666. These definitions and alliterations adopted in other contemporary mediums. See for example Estebean Terreros y Pando, Diccionario castellano con las voces de ciencas y artes y sus correspondientas en las tres lenguas francesa, latina e italiana, (1787), II, 645. Note also the influence of Dictionnaire and Encyclopédie on the definition of narod (nation) in Jezierski’s Polish dictionary. Franciszek Jezierski, “Some Words, Alphabetically Ordered,” in Trencsényi and Kopeček, Discourses of Collective Identity, I, 132–6.

21. Encyclopédie (1765), IX, 249–62.

22. Ibid., 249.

23. Morrissey, “Encyclopédie,” 159.

24. For correlation with ideas in Condillac’s Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaine (1746), see Lifschitz, “The Arbitrariness of the Linguistic Sign,” 550.

25. Morrissey, “Encyclopédie,” 156.

26. Encyclopédie (1755), V, 638.

27. Chambers, Cyclopaedia, xxx.

28. Note also similar account of aims in the prologue to the Spanish Royal Academy’s Diccionario de la lengua castellana, en que se explica el verdadero sentido de las voces, su naturaleza y calidad, con las phrases o modos de hablar, los proverbios o refranes, y otras cosas convenientes al uso de la lengua (1726), I, ii.

29. Török, “Patriotic Scholarship,” 679.

30. Quote from Herder’s Idea for the First Patriotic Institute for the Common Spirit of Germany (1781) cited in Benner, “Nationalism,” 43.

31. Johnson, “Preface to the English Dictionary,” in The Works of Samuel Johnson, II, 65. If chiding the “academicians” for their conceit in believing themselves capable of “perfecting” a language, he nevertheless agreed that “the glory of a nation” rested greatly upon its letters. Johnson, “Plan of an English Dictionary,” in The Works of Samuel Johnson, II, 23. See for example references to Colbert and the other creators of the Dictionnaire, whose dedication to the project was said to be similarly inspired by the belief that “that which serves to form the Eloquence contributes immensely to the glory of a Nation” Dictionnaire de l’Academie francoise (1694), I, iv, vii.

32. Johnson, “Plan,” 64. Johnson was particularly concerned by the tendency of “Gallick” elements to supplant the “Teutonick.” Ibid., 52. Similar warnings in Brown, Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times. Note that if D’Alembert’s reconstruction of events in the “Discours Preliminaire” from the Encyclopedie is to be trusted, this may not, in fact, have been far from the Dictionnaire’s original intent. “Our language being widespread throughout Europe,” wrote D’Alembert, “we believed that the time had come to substitute it for Latin.” Unfortunately, “the scholars of other nations to whom we had given the example, believed with reason that they could write better in their own language than in ours.” Encyclopédie (1751), I, xxx.

33. “National characters,” he added, alluding to the linkage between language and “national” distinctiveness discussed throughout, “where have you gone?” Herder, Another Philosophy of History, 64–5.

34. Johnson, “Preface,” 53. Many similar contemporary examples of this discourse cited in Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism. This sense of competition perhaps reflected again in Herder’s claim from 1781 that “[t]he people of Europe are now in a contest of, not physical, but mental and artistic forces with each other.” Cited in Benner, “Nationalism,” 37.

35. Still others associated steps in the direction of refinement and perfection with a loss of perspicuity, See for example Rosenfeld, A Revolution in Language. These issues also noted in passing by Voltaire in Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l’histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu’a Louis XIII in Collection complete des oeuvres de M. de Voltaire, I, 35; Dunbar, Essays on the History of Mankind in Rude and Cultivated Ages, 124; Johnson, Dictionary, I, 52.

36. Note that mœurs, manners, genie, character, etc. were often used in indiscrete fashion. The following discussion adopts the terms favoured by a given author when discussing a particular work.

37. Text refers to Remarques sur la grammaire, generale et raisonee (1754) in Duclos, Oeuvres complètes de Duclos, IX, 9.

38. Rousseau Oeuvres complètes de J.J. Rousseau, XIX, 215. The implications of national character for matters of governance considered also in Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality, 159; Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, 16–21, 30–8, 130.

39. Lauzon, Signs of Light, 46–120. See for example Leibniz’s “Exhortation to the Germans to better use their Mind and Language” (1679) in Tatlock, Seventeenth Century German Prose, 14–28. For Johnson’s perspective on Locke and previous English lexicographers see Kolb and DeMaria in Johnson on the English Language, xvii–xxxix.

40. Lauzon, Signs of Light, 115–18, 136–7. Similar endeavours by Jean Bodin (1530–96) noted in Grafton, What Was History?, 64, 191; Bell, Cult of the Nation, 143.

41. Lauzon, Signs of Light, 138–81; Hirschi, Origins of Nationalism, 114–17.

42. From Francois Charpentier, De l’excellence de la langue francoise (1683). Cited in Lauzon, Signs of Light, 151–2.

43. D’Espiard’s views on language echoed in Richardson’s A Dissertation on the Languages, Literature and Manners of Eastern Nations and Andrews, A Review of the Characters of the Principal Nations in Europe, A Comparative View of the French and English Nations, in their Manners, Politics and Literature, and An Account of the Character and Manners of the French, with Occasional Observations on the English [later translated as Essai sur le caractèr et les Moeurs des Francais comparees a celles des Anglois].

44. Goldsmith, “A Comparative View of Races and Nations” (1760) in Collected Works III, 75–7, 80; Griffin, Enlightenment in Ruins, 44, 46. See also Hudson, “From ‘Nation’ to ‘Race;’” Hayman, “Notions on National Characters,” 14–15.

45. Text refers to a Spectator piece from 1710. Addison, The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, III, 321.

46. Lauzon, Signs of Light, 179–82.

47. Dunbar, History of Mankind, 109, 132.

48. Legendre, Les moeurs et coutumes du français: du premier temps de la monarchie; Bruyére, Les Caracteres de Theophraste, traduits des grec, avec les caracteres ou les Mœurs de ce siecle (1688). See also for further context Dornier, “Entre Moralisme et Reformisme,” 191–205; Bell, “Le caractère national,” 869.

49. He himself withdrew from doing so on account of the scale of the task and the demands of impartiality. Duclos, Considerations sur les mœurs de ce Siecle, 6–7, 12–13.

50. Muralt’s, Lettres sur les Anglois et les François et sur les voiages.

51. Montesquieu, Oeuvres de M. de Montesquieu, II, 209. The perceived affinity between d’Espiard and Montesquieu’s work further reflected in the re-issue of d’Espiard’s Essais sur les génie et le caractère des nations (1743) as L’Esprit des nations in 1752.

52. D’Espiard, Essais sur le genie et le caractère des nations. Bell, Cult of the Nation, 10, n.224. D’Espiard’s influence on Montesquieu qualified by Romani, who points to an earlier engagement of the latter with these themes. Romani, “All Montesquieu’s Sons.”

53. “We divide humankind into four essential branches ... distinguished by language, color, customs, shape, tastes, Religion.” D’Espiard, L’Esprit des Nations, I, 4. D’Espiard’s chapter title “Of other bodily qualities, peculiar to Nations of different climates, the voices, the pronunciation of languages” (Ibid., 39) reprised in Castilhon’s Considérations sur les causes physiques et morales de la diversité du génie, des mœurs, et du gouvernment des nations (1769), 36, a work also notable for its insistence on French cultural, especially linguistic, supremacy.

54. “Just as the whole human species could not possibly remain a single herd, likewise it could not retain a single language either.” Herder, “Treatise on the Origin of Language,” in Philosophical Writings, 147.

55. Ibid., 148.

56. D'Orville, Dictionnaire universel, historique et critique des moeurs, loix, usages et coutumes civiles, militaires et politiques, II, 389. Muralt alluded to similar correlations in his earlier Lettres sur les Anglois et les François: “D'ailleurs, le Génie de la Nation,” he wrote of the English, “est pour le Sérieux; leur langue est forte & succinte , telle qu'il la faut pour exprimer les Passions.” Muralt, Lettres sur les Anglois et les François, 57.

57. Herder, “Treatise on the Origin of Language,” 152–4.

58. Ibid., 154. For Gottingen School thinkers such as Adelung, “national” languages similarly evolved from larger “racial” linguistic complexes shaped by climate. Language was indeed “the most important symbol of a nation’s uniqueness,” Adelung declared, and “the nation that loses its language also loses its identity.” Carhart, The Science of Culture, 95, 102–3, 184. Note for example Vico, The First New Science, 206.

59. Hume, History of England, 1: 3-4.

60. Buchanan, History of Scotland, 2: 50–88. Robertson, History of Scotland, 1: 3. See also Pinkerton, Dissertation of the Origin and Progress of the Scythians and Goths (1787). For additional context see O’Brien and Manning, “Historiography, Biography and Identity,” 146; Kidd, “Gaelic Antiquity and National Identity,” and Subverting Scotland’s Past. Note that Thomas Jefferson drew upon the same heuristic tradition when commenting upon the ancestry of various European and American “nations;” language was, in his words, “the best proof of the affinity of nations which can ever be referred to.” See Notes on the State of Virginia (1781) in Jefferson, Writings, 226–7.

61. D’Espiard, L’Esprit des Nations, I, iii. Here again, Montesquieu’s role in giving a “formative spirit” to this type of enterprise has been judged significant, as noted in the case of Adam Ferguson, who likened his own work on the development of civil society to a “general history of nations” in the manner of Montesquieu. Trevor Roper, History and the Enlightenment, 5; Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, 98.

62. Voltaire quote cited in Force, “Voltaire and the Necessity of Modern History,” 475. Voltaire’s Essai first published in 1756; re-issued in 1769 with the earlier published Philosophie de Histoire inserted at the beginning as a “preliminary discourse.”

63. For Voltaire’s relationship to Bossuet and contemporary genres of history, see Force, “Voltaire,” 459, 477; J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 2: 72–162; Peter Burke, “European Views of World History from Giovio to Voltaire;” O'Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment; Miricam-Bourdet, Voltaire et l’écriture de l’histoire; Berger, The Past as History.

64. Bossuet, Discours sur l’histoire Universelle, 11, 210, 368, 411, 412, 416, 437, 448, 491; Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs, 4.

65. Pujol, “Histoire et philosophie,” 182; Bell, Cult; Berger, Past as History, 57; Carhart, Science of Culture.

66. By joining the “Relations of Travelers,” wrote d’Espiard, with ideas from “the different Parts of universal History,” contemporary thinkers could obtain a more empirically informed view of the conditions affecting the formation of nations and mœurs over time. D’Espiard, L’Esprit des Nations, 1: iv. For Robertson, the discovery of the Americas presented modern thinkers with a view (unknown to Greco-Roman writers) of what they took to be “the sentiments and actions of human beings in the infancy of social life.” Robertson, History of America, 1: 282. For the influence of travel writing on Herder’s sense of national and linguistic diversity, see Paxman, Voyage into Language, 221–6. See also Fulford and Bolton, eds., Travels, Explorations, and Empires, and Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, for additional context and examples.

67. Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs, 33.

68. Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs, 10. Note that opinions varied over the extent to which language was a precursor or by-product of political union. For Hume: “Where a Number of men are united into one political body,” wrote Hume, “the occasions of their intercourse must be so frequent, for defense, commerce, and government, that, along with the same speech or language, they must contract a resemblance in their manners and have a common or national character, as well as a personal one, peculiar to each individual.” Hume, “Of National Characters,” 284. See also Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 96–7; Encyclopedie (1765), IX, 252. As noted nevertheless above, many, including Hume, agreed that language was a principal means of establishing the lineage of “nations.”

69. Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs, 10.

70. Many additional examples cited in Berger, The Past, 28–79. For Robertson and his influence, see O’Brien, “Between the Enlightenment and Stadial History;” Hargraves, “National History and ‘Philosophical’ History;” Kontler, “William Robertson’s History of Manners in Germany, 1770–1795;” Sher and Southern, Scotland and America in the Age of Enlightenment; Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology, 33. As noted by Sanchez Albornoz, “el siglo XVIII hispano fue el siglo de la Historia.” Quoted in Fusi, Espana, 147. Here too it was to be practised in the form of an “applicacion retrospectiva de las normas de racionalidad” in which the historian sought not merely to record dates and events, but explain the “origin and evolution of the legislation, customs and politics of Spain in history.” Varela, “Nación, patria y patrotismo,” 38.

71. Robertson, History of America, I, 265, 312; II, 273. See also Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World, 11–59.

72. Robertson, History of America, II, 278, 470, 477, 481.

73. Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles V, I, 75

74. Ibid., I, 83.

75. Although Robertson accepted the conventional wisdom that barbarous nations were nearly indistinguishable from one another, the modicum of unity and manners exhibited by the groups in question qualified them for nationhood. Robertson, History of America, I, 282, 287–8, 337.

76. Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, Generale et Particuliere, III, 492.

77. Ibid., III, 491.

78. Ibid., III, 491.

79. Ibid., III, 493. For similar thoughts in Condillac and Turgot, see “Sur les Reflexions Philosophiques de M. de Maupertius,” in Turgot, Oeuvres de M. Turgot, II, 105; Lifschitz, “The Arbitrariness of the Linguistic Sign,” 550.

80. As stated in the Encyclopédie, the patois was not the “national language.” Encyclopédie (1765), IX, 256–7. See also Rosenfeld, Revolution in Language; Bell, “Lingua Populi, Lingua Dei: Language,” 1412. Note too the case of the multi-ethnic “political nations” of Hungary and Poland, although these possessed a lingua franca of their own (Latin). Frost, “Ordering the Kaleidoscope,” 221; Evans, “Language and State Building,” 8.

81. Gregoire, Essai sur la regeneration physique, morale et politique des juifs, 134. For Gregoire’s revolutionary-era writings and actions see Sepinwall, The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution.

82. The importance as commerce as an agent of stadial change was a common theme. See for example Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique, 4.

83. Kostkiewiczowa, “Reflections on Patriotism,” 699.

84. Karel Thám, “Apology of the Czech Language,” in Trencsényi and Kopeček, Discourses of Collective Identity, I, 209. For the influence of Gottingen School thinkers on linguistic ventures of Dobner, Dobrovsky and Tham, see Agnew, The Origins of the Czech National Renascence, 49–52, 83–5, 112–13.

85. Konstantas and Philippidis, Geographia Neoteriki, 146; Kostkiewiczowa, “Reflections on Patriotism,” 699.

86. For M. Lomonosov’s Russian Grammar (1754) see Wachtel, “Translation, Imperialism, and National Self-Definition in Russia,” 55; Vatchevka, “Identité Nationale de la Littérature Russe,” 113. For additional cultural contexts, see Katartzis, Ta Evriskomena, 172; Thám “Apology,” 209; Jan Baptist Verlooy, “Treatise on the Neglect of the Mother Tongue,” in Hermans, The Flemish Movement, 49–50; Obradović, The Life and Adventures of Dimitrije Obradović. Zammito writes similarly of a “campaign” in the German-speaking world to attain “cultural parity with Western Europe.” Zammito, Kant, Herder, 309; Blanning, Power of Culture, 232–65; Herder, J.G. Herder on Social and Political Culture, 112. For the influence of German Enlightenment on Slavic and Magyar reformers see M.C. Ives, Enlightenment and National Revival, 16; Whaley, “The Transformation of the Aufklärung,” 175–6; Štaif, “The Image of the Other in the Nineteenth Century;” Macura, “Problems and Paradoxes,” 190.

87. Moisiodax, Theoria tis Geographias, 10; Török, “Patriotic Scholarship,” 699.

88. Johnson, “Plan of an English Dictionary,” 28.

89. For life and works of Katartzis see, Ta Evriskomena; Dokimia; Dimaras, La Grece au temps des Lumieres, 26–36; Anna Tabaki, “Historiographie et identité nationale;” Kitromilides, “‘Imagined Communities’ and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans” and Enlightenment and Revolution, 142–56; Mackridge, Language and National Identity, 92–101. Translations can be found in P. Chatzispirou, Les Essais de Dimitrios Katartzis; Trencsényi and Kopeček, Discourses of Collective Identity, 1: 210–17.

90. Katartzis, Dokimia, xliii; Ta Evriskomena, 36–7.

91. These interests were balanced by an impulse to identify those ideas suitable for appropriation. Katartzis, Ta Evriskomena, 46, 104, 177, 201. This critical stance toward foreign letters was shared by contemporaries such as Dobrovsky. See for example, Teich, “Bohemia: From Darkness into Light,” 161.

92. Katartzis, Ta Evriskomena, 44–6. Katartzis’s choice of ethnos as a native rendering of “nation” possibly based on its usage in the works of Aristotle. For additional lexicographical background see Kitromilides, “‘Imagined Communities;” Mackridge, Language and National Identity, 92–101; Ward, “Ethnos in the Politics.”

93. Katartzis, Ta Evriskomena, 171–2. For an introduction to the life and works of Korais, see especially Kitromilides, Korais and the European Enlightenment.

94. Katartzis, Ta Evriskomena, 14, 104–5.

95. Future Greek historians should “dwell especially on the history of the pious Romans, treating it as our own history.” There was also a glaring absence of works on the period since 1453. Katartzis, Ta Evriskomena, 149. From these, the Romaioi would learn what distinguished them as a nation both from earlier peoples as well as neighbouring others; even other communities of Orthodox faithful, such as “the Serbs, Bulgarians and Bosnians.” Katartzis, Ta Evriskomena, 201; Katartzis, Dokimia, xliii; Ta Evriskomena, 36–7.

96. Katartzis, Dokimia, xliii; Ta Evriskomena, 36–7.

97. Katartzis, Ta Evriskomena 50, 149, 171.

98. Responses to Habsburg language ordinances discussed in Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs, 167; Evans, “The Politics of Language,” 204, 209–11; Agnew, Origins, 26; Hroch, “From Ethnic Group toward the Modern Nation.”

99. Evans, “The Politics of Language,” 204, 209–11; Király, “The Political and Social Legacy of the Enlightenment,” 5–6; Ives, Enlightenment and National Revival, 15–16.

100. József Kármán, “The Refinement of the Nation,” in Trencsényi and Kopeček, Discourses, I, 231–6.

101. Brock, The Slovak National Awakening; Wank, “Some Reflections on the Habsburg Empire.” The controversies surrounding the practice of Enlightened Absolutism provide additional context finally for the vitriol found in several works of Herder, the fates of nations, languages and national characters depicted as bound together in the manner charted above. Herder, Another Philosophy of History, xxxviii, 60–2, 64–5; 89–91; Herder, Philosophical Writings, 316, 318, 354–5.

102. Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History, 38.

103. McBride, “The Nation in the Age of Revolution,” 249. For Vattel, the steps taken in this work of “perfection” were to be judged suitable or not according to the given nation’s “character” and the form of civil society towards which it was inclined. A nation “must” in fact “know itself. Without this knowledge it could not labor with success toward its own perfection.” This perfection was to be measured finally by the satisfaction of each nation’s material wants and accomplishments in the realm of learning. Vattel, Droit des gens, I, 4, 11–14, 43–9. For Vico, “the nation” reached its “perfect state” when the “sciences, disciplines, arts, religion and laws” were directed toward the same ends. Vico, The First New Science, 211.

104. See for example Smith and Eriksen in Guibernau and Rex, The Ethnicity Reader.

105. Glimpses of what some might call an essentialist sentiment do occasionally appear – as of course do those of the “civic” ideal in later eras. Walicki, Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism, 104; Carhart, Science of Culture, 4; Obradović in Trencsényi and Kopeček, Discourses, I, 222. Richards, “The Axiomatization of National Differences;” Renan and Weber in Smith and Hutchinson, Nationalism, 17–18, 21–5; Berger, “Germany. Ethnic Nationalism par Excellence?”; Vick, “Language and Nation,” 44, 157–8.

106. Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, 4. The widespread nature of the literary engagement with the nation ensured a substantial range of re-interpretation from one setting to the next. This diversity of interpretation did not go unnoticed by nineteenth-century figures such as Joszef Eötvös. Eötvös, The Dominant Ideas of the Nineteenth Century, I, 110. Similar contemporary controversies of an ethno-linguistic/civic order discussed in see Evans, “Language and State Building;” Trencsényi and Kopeček, Discourses, II, 330–8, 348–58; Vick, Defining Germany, 40; Tollebeek, “Historical Representation and the Nation-State.”

107. This mode of approach advocated in Baker, “Enlightenment Idioms.” Note also Breuilly’s response when writing recently on “how far modern nationalism builds upon earlier ideas of the nation.” As Breuilly observed: “Just as building materials limit the range of possible buildings but do not determine (or make it possible to predict) just what building will be constructed, so do historical legacies relate to political ideologies.” Breuilly, “Changes in the Political Uses of the Nation,” 93.

108. Bell, Cult, 12–15. Further examples of “improvisation” illustrated in Bell, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being French.”