ABSTRACT
There are many important respects in which the history of modem France starts with the Revolution of 1789. But, as Tocqueville was one ofthe first to argue, it is easy to overstate discontinuities between the ancien regime and modern France. The French Revolution inherited the absolutist conception of sovereignty and the centralised state from the ancien regime. It continued and expanded the state-building process, notably in areas where the monarchy had been less effective such as unifying the legal system, eliminating internal barriers to trade, and suppressing the privileges of the nobility and the church. The locus of sovereignty was shifted decisively from the king to the people, but the fundamental nature of statehood was essentially unchanged. In the prerevolutionary period, nationhood was more fluid than statehood.
