Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Enlightenment Era Representations of the Nation
- 3 The Enlightenment Nation as a Site of Practice
- 4 The French Revolution and Napoleonic Inheritance
- 5 The Greek Revolution of 1821
- 6 Revolutions of 1830
- 7 Revolutions of 1848
- 8 Epilogue
- Bibliography
- About the Author
- Index
3 - The Enlightenment Nation as a Site of Practice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Enlightenment Era Representations of the Nation
- 3 The Enlightenment Nation as a Site of Practice
- 4 The French Revolution and Napoleonic Inheritance
- 5 The Greek Revolution of 1821
- 6 Revolutions of 1830
- 7 Revolutions of 1848
- 8 Epilogue
- Bibliography
- About the Author
- Index
Summary
Abstract
The present chapter moves across eighteenth-century Europe and offers many illustrations of how people engaged with the ideas described in the previous chapter and sought to put them into practice, often with the aim of freeing their particular nations from the scourge of backwardness and attaining parity with those deemed to have reached a higher state of ‘refinement’ or ‘perfection.’ Particular stress is placed on educational initiatives and the production of dictionaries and grammars, works which, by making the nation's language an effective medium for modern scholarship, echoed the aims of earlier French and English lexicographical ventures.
Keywords: cultural nationalism, national regeneration, Seven Years’ War, Enlightened Absolutism
‘But what will result from this?’ someone may ask. It will come to pass that men destined for the priesthood may with no further delay […] be given such books as may make them more learned when they read them, that they may be capable of teaching themselves and their own nation, leading their nation in the paths of righteousness and enlightenment: such are the things that in the name of God will result from this.
The words of the Serbian monk and educator Dimitrije Obradović (1743?-1811) echo the sentiments of other scholars and churchmen from Southeastern Europe whose appeals for new schools and books in the ‘popular language’ were at least partly inspired by the goal of preserving the integrity of Orthodox practice. Looming throughout and mingling with the otherwise hopeful messages found in these texts are darker references to the sad plight of peoples condemned to lives of poverty and superstition or left indefinitely to wander, in the words of a contemporary Greek cleric, in the ‘labyrinth of illiteracy and barbarism.’ Such documents help further to illustrate the variety of ways in which Enlightenment era actors portrayed the instrumentality of their educational initiatives and still larger quests for ‘national regeneration’; a cause which, as Obradović infers, was not free of controversy but often capable of arousing intense conflicts and ‘culture wars’ among various factions of patriots who each believed themselves best-placed to judge of the nation's true needs and interests.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Nationalism and Revolution in Europe, 1763–1848 , pp. 51 - 78Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020