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Before the revolution, and for most of the nineteenth century there was hardly any common French idea. Like with most countries, community and tradition are recent inventions.
Graham Robb in ‘the discovery of France’ has the perfect analogy that a French dialect only carried as far as the nearest church bell. People a valley further would speak a different vernacular.
Like one from abroad old enough to remember the old idea of America as something to aspire to:
It’s kind of like losing your older brother to a crippling drug addiction (almost literally). You know that he wasn’t always perfect, but he was always there. Nowadays you are never sure how he will act, sometimes showing signs of how he used to be, but more often bring a disappointment.
Glad to live up to the expectation!