The French Empire

today: France (excluding Alsace and Lorraine), parts of West Africa, islands in the Lesser Antilles)

They are still in the second half of the 19th century. In France, there lived numerous ethnic groups in the regions of Aquitaine, Provence, Brittany, Corsica, etc., who did not feel French or knew French spoken in the regions around Paris. The construction of the nation was slow but successful, with the great advantage of the fact that France was an independent and centralized state with a centuries-old tradition of political borders and similarities between the Romance languages. In order to maintain the unity of the scattered parts of the colonial empire, the French ideologists did not care for a common "blood origin" in defining the nation, but more important for them to be born on French territory, and to show loyalty to the nation and a willingness to sacrifice regional cultural specialties (language, customs). in the name of a unique language, culture, values ​​and a unique nation-state.

Inventing tradition in France played an essential role in maintaining the republican order (1870-1940). However, unlike the United States and Latin American countries, for example, the French Republic has shied away from the cults of the Father's Nation, already preferring symbols using themes related to national history such as the tricolor, the motto ''freedom, equality, brotherhood'', Marseilles, Marianne - symbols of the Republic and freedom, the day marking the fall of the Bastille prison, etc.