ABSTRACT
Invocations of a second French Renaissance, of a reawakening of the national spirit, punctuated the public discourse of pre-First World War France. Such declarations described a movement of opinion, conservative in hue, but not without appeal to maverick left-wingers. The chief political repercussion of the new, nationalist mood was Raymond Poincaré’s elevation to the presidency in 1913. But it may fairly be argued that the phenomenon played itself out, not so much at the level of partisan as of interest-group politics. Poincaré’s person provided a symbolic focus to the new nationalism, but the movement’s principal base of operations lay in a network of interlocking voluntary associations.
