Editing Nationalism (section)

==== France ====
{{main|French nationalism}}
{{further|French–German enmity|Revanchism}}
[[File:The Geography Lesson or "The Black Spot".jpg|thumb|A painting by [[Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville]] from 1887 depicting French students being taught about the lost provinces of [[Alsace-Lorraine]], taken by Germany in 1871]]
Nationalism in France gained early expressions in France's revolutionary government. In 1793, that government declared a mass conscription (''levée en masse'') with a call to service:
<blockquote>Henceforth, until the enemies have been driven from the territory of the Republic, all the French are in permanent requisition for army service. The young men shall go to battle; the married men shall forge arms in the hospitals; the children shall turn old linen to lint; the old men shall repair to the public places, to stimulate the courage of the warriors and preach the unity of the Republic and the hatred of kings.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The People in Arms: Military Myth and National Mobilization since the French Revolution|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2003|editor-last=Moran|editor-first=Daniel|location=Cambridge|pages=14|editor-last2=Waldron|editor-first2=Arthur}}</ref></blockquote>

This nationalism gained pace after the French Revolution came to a close. Defeat in war, with a loss in territory, was a powerful force in nationalism. In France, revenge and return of [[Alsace-Lorraine]] was a powerful motivating force for a quarter century after their defeat by Germany in 1871. After 1895, French nationalists focused on Dreyfus and internal subversion, and the Alsace issue petered out.<ref>{{cite book|author=K. Varley|title=Under the Shadow of Defeat: The War of 1870–71 in French Memory|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wJGFDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA54|year=2008|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-0230582347|page=54}}</ref>

The French reaction was a famous case of [[Revanchism|''Revanchism'' ("revenge")]] which demands the return of lost territory that "belongs" to the national homeland. Revanchism draws its strength from patriotic and retributionist thought and it is often motivated by economic or geo-political factors. Extreme revanchist ideologues often represent a hawkish stance, suggesting that their desired objectives can be achieved through the positive outcome of another war. It is linked with irredentism, the conception that a part of the cultural and ethnic nation remains "unredeemed" outside the borders of its appropriate nation state. Revanchist politics often rely on the identification of a nation with a nation state, often mobilizing deep-rooted sentiments of ethnic nationalism, claiming territories outside the state where members of the ethnic group live, while using heavy-handed nationalism to mobilize support for these aims. Revanchist justifications are often presented as based on ancient or even autochthonous occupation of a territory since "time immemorial", an assertion that is usually inextricably involved in revanchism and irredentism, justifying them in the eyes of their proponents.<ref>Karine Varley, "The Taboos of Defeat: Unmentionable Memories of the Franco-Prussian War in France, 1870–1914." in Jenny Macleod, ed., ''Defeat and Memory: Cultural Histories of Military Defeat in the Modern Era'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) pp. 62–80.</ref>

The [[Dreyfus Affair]] in France 1894–1906 made the battle against treason and disloyalty a central theme for conservative Catholic French nationalists. Dreyfus, a Jew, was an outsider, that is in the views of intense nationalists, not a true Frenchman, not one to be trusted, not one to be given the benefit of the doubt. True loyalty to the nation, from the conservative viewpoint, was threatened by liberal and republican principles of liberty and equality that were leading the country to disaster.<ref name="google_2016_pg173">{{cite book|author=Jeremy D. Popkin|title=A History of Modern France|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dAk3DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA173|year=2016|page=173|publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1315508207}}</ref>