Prelude to nation-states: the French and German experience, 1789-1815

The French Revolution, a milestone of history in many respects, triggered the development of the most desired and exemplary form of political organizational on the European Continent-the nation-state. This is the first comparative study of the entire spectrum of French and German nationalism during the decisive years 1789-1815.
The development of the French nation-state in the French Revolution and the following quarter century determined the features of all nation-states. Similar aspirations also greatly influenced German history during this period, with success coming in 1871.
The French form of nationalism, born as a cult of universal man, stressed liberty, equality, fraternity-the enlightenment and casting off of the chain of an old order. It proclaimed the triumph of universal reason and science.
German nationalism proved to be very different. It stressed tradition and blood and the old knightly and feudal order--romantic, hierarchic, and narrowly ethnocentric. This form emerged in the German youth and intellectuals to confront the empire-building of the Napoleonic eras, and has since found fertile soil in Eastern Europe, Asia, and even Africa in our century.
The author uses extensive quotation from original sources to develop both the French and German experience of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic years to make full display of the classic case of nationalism.