This book explores the process by which the French Basque country acquired a folkloric regional identity in the long nineteenth century. It argues that, despite its origins in pre-modern customs, this stereotypical identity was invented as part of France’s process of nation-building. The abolition of privileges in 1789 prompted a new interest in local culture as the defining feature of provincial France, shaping the transition from the pre-‘modern’ province to the ‘modern’ region. The relationship between the region and the nation, however, was difficult. Regional culture favoured the integration of the French Basque provinces into the French nation-state but also challenged the authority of the central state. As a result, Basque region-building reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the unitary model of French nationhood, in the nineteenth century as well as today.
Talitha Ilacqua is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at Yale University and the University of Venice
Introduction: region- and nation-building in nineteenth-century Europe1 Adapting the Revolution2 Basque soldiers in a French nation3 Liberty, liberties and legitimism in the First Carlist War4 Euskara or the spirit of the Basque nation5 Inventing a Basque literary tradition6 Euskara or challenges to the French nation7 ‘The other within’: ideas of progress and decline in Basque travel writing8 Reversing the ‘tourist gaze’Conclusion: a Basque region in a French nationIndex
'The book is a must-read for historians of modern France and its regions and will make a major contribution to the field.'Winner of the SSFH Book Prize
