Neither reformers nor réformés: The construction of French modernity in the Nineteenth Century

Murray-Miller, Gavin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4543-4980 2014. Neither reformers nor réformés: The construction of French modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Historical Reflections Reflexions Historiques 40 (3) , pp. 44-67. 10.3167/hrrh.2014.400303

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Abstract

Modernity has typically been considered a process consisting of “modernizing” initiatives concerned with nation-building, industrial economic development, and new social and political practices associated with democratization. This article engages ongoing debates regarding the import and meaning of modernity for historians and argues in favor of an historically situated understanding of the modern based upon an examination of social power and identity in post-revolutionary France. In particular, it assesses the transformation of social and political relationships in the nineteenth century as France embraced mass democracy and overseas imperial expansion in North Africa, arguing that modernity became a convenient means of preserving elite primacy and identity in an age increasingly oriented toward egalitarianism, democratic participation, and the acquisition of global empires.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	History, Archaeology and Religion
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DC France
Publisher:	Berghahn Journals
ISSN:	0315-7997
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	03 Dec 2024 11:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/75042

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