Abstract
According to a common understanding, European wars in the period from the French Revolution to the mid-twentieth century were national wars. One nation attacked another and war was fought for the sake of the nation. Things seem to have completely changed today: not only has coalition warfare become the rule and wars of one nation against another much less frequent, it even appears that ‘nation-building’ — for instance in a country like Afghanistan — became part of a ‘peace building’ strategy. Thus the reference to the nation has completely changed its meaning: from a motivation for war, and even for total war, to a ground on which peace is to be built. In order to understand this apparent paradox, it is necessary to enquire what historical actors were actually talking about when invoking the nation as a motivation for fighting, for heroism and for self-sacrifice. Many scholars of the nation and of nationalism have underlined that it is quite difficult to define the nation. However, a basic understanding today seems to involve a definition of the nation as people sharing a territory, a common language and culture, as well as some community of ethnic descent. It is immediately clear that processes of globalization and of migration have effectively challenged this meaning today. However, it is the contention of this chapter that the nation was right from the onset an unstable ground for a motivation to fight and that the concept carried multiple and partly contradictory meanings that have always been incompatible with the above-outlined understanding of the nation and of nationalism.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Most of the following examples are from Thomas Hippler, Citizens, Soldiers and National Armies: Military Service in France and Germany (London: Routledge, 2008).
Thomas Abbt, ‘Vom Tode für das Vaterland’, in Fritz Brüggemann (ed.), Der Siebenjährige Krieg im Spiegel der zeitgenössischen Literatur (Leipzig: Reclam, 1935), p. 50.
Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (Oxford: Berg, 1988), p. 38.
René Bouscayrol (ed.), Cent lettres de soldats de l’an II (Paris: Aux amateurs de livres, 1987), p. 115.
Johann Gottlob Fichte, ‘Der Patriotismus und sein Gegenteil’, in Reinhard Lauth and Hans Gliwitzky (eds), Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt: Nachgelassene Schriften, 1964).
Johann Gottlob Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, ed. G. A. Kelly (New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1968), pp. 60–1.
Emmanuel Sieyès, What Is the Third Estate? (London and Dunmow: Pall Mall Press, 1963), p. 57.
See Michael Jeismarm, Das Vaterland der Feinde. Studien zum nationalen Feindbegriff und Selbstverständnis in Deutschland und Frankreich, 1792–1918 (Stuttgart: Klett Cotta, 1992), esp. pp. 27–102.
Friedrich Wilhelm von Lossberg, Briefe in die Heimat geschrieben während des Feldzugs 1812 in Rußland (Leipzig: Wigand, 1910), p. 215.
Edward N. Luttwak, ‘Toward Post-Heroic Warfare’, Foreign Affairs, vol.74/3 (1995): 109–22.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Thomas Hippler
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hippler, T. (2014). Heroism and the Nation during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and the Age of Military Reform in Europe. In: Scheipers, S. (eds) Heroism and the Changing Character of War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137362537_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137362537_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-47270-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-36253-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)