ABSTRACT
In 1900 a French royalist observed: ‘I believe that serious and careful historians, free of partiality, passion or hatred, will never include Boulangism among the nationalist events.’1 This was an understandable sentiment since few royalists recalled the Boulanger Affair with much fondness. But it was also bad history. The Boulanger years were a critical turning point in the history of French nationalism and of French royalism. In the quarter century after 1889 the French right underwent radical modifications-it became a ‘new right’—the first of a series. What made the post-1889 right ‘new’ was the appropriation of doctrines previously identified with the revolutionary left and likewise previously anathema to traditional conservatives. The most important of these new acquisitions was nationalism.
