ABSTRACT
The French people have felt intensely throughout most of their long history that there was an essential connection between their nationhood and the place their nation held in the world. What they were to themselves depended to a very considerable degree on what they were (or thought they were) to others: not masters or aspirants to mastery (except once or twice) but leaders and guides. The French have seen France as the model feudal nation, the model absolute monarchy, the first democratic republic in Europe, and the central source of European intellectual inspiration—Catholic, rationalist, liberal, democratic, socialist, and much else—as also of Romanesque, Gothic, classical, romantic, and modern art.
