Making a National Movement

Le résumé fourni par la source

Abstract This chapter examines how the crisis after 1830 came to create a powerful national reform movement. As well as exhortations from press and politicians, a range of other practices knit people and communities together. These energized local activists and stories in service to a wider national goal in such a way as to make the claims that reformers embodied the nation compelling and persuasive. It argues that, in its self-conscious efforts to mobilize the authority of the leading institutions of the state, in its co-option of the rituals and trappings of a patriotic and loyalist culture that had been developed during the French wars between 1793 and 1815, and in its overwhelming reliance on the emotive appeal of national histories and symbols, the reform movement should be categorized as a nationalist movement. The national consensus claimed by reformers was most meaningful at particular moments and it was never complete. Indeed, efforts to fix the boundaries of a reform nation invited challenge from groups left outside of its embrace. The nation was hotly contested across the crisis as anti-reformers and radical reformers essayed their own versions.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.