The Cult of the Modern

Trans-Mediterranean France and the Construction of French Modernity

Gavin Murray-Miller

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780803290648
• eBook ISBN: 9781496200297
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

The Cult of the Modern focuses on nineteenth-century France and Algeria and examines the role that ideas of modernity and modernization played in both national and colonial programs during the years of the Second Empire and the early Third Republic.Gavin Murray-Miller rethinks the subject by examining the idiomatic use of modernity in French cultural and political discourse. The Cult of the Modern argues that the modern French republic is a product of nineteenth-century colonialism rather than a creation of the Enlightenment or the French Revolution. This analysis contests the predominant Parisian and metropolitan contexts that have traditionally framed French modernity studies, noting the important role that colonial Algeria and the administration of Muslim subjects played in shaping understandings of modern identity and governance among nineteenth-century politicians and intellectuals. In synthesizing the narratives of continental France and colonial North Africa, Murray-Miller proposes a new framework for nineteenth-century French political and cultural history, bringing into sharp relief the diverse ways in which the French nation was imagined and represented throughout the country's turbulent postrevolutionary history, as well asthe implications for prevailing understandings of France today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Imagining the Modern Community
• 2. State Modernization and the Making of Bonapartist Modernity
• 3. Civilizing and Nationalizing
• 4. The Crucible of Modern Society
• 5. Old Ends and New Means
• 6. Republican Government and Political Modernization
• 7. Toward the Trans-Mediterranean Republic
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About Gavin Murray-Miller
• Series List