Description
While friendship is typically conceived of as an interindividual concept, including in this special issue, this contribution operates a shift in scale to explore the evolving usage of the term in describing relations between states, nations, or political groups during the first half of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the concept of ‘friendship’ has frequently been employed to characterise international relations. Although there exists scholarship within International Relations focusing on the use of ‘friendship’ during the Early Modern period and the twentieth century, there is a gap in the literature concerning the nineteenth century. Consequently, this raises the question: how was the term ‘friendship’ used in France within the context of international relations during the Age of Revolutions (1789-1848)?
The 1789 French Revolution brought about notable changes in discourses on foreign policy. Firstly, while the revolutionaries referred to friends and foes, they carefully distinguished between foreign governments and foreign nations, peoples, and partisans. To put it simply, the French Republic officials employed the term friendship not only in relation to states, but to nations, people, and political groups, some of whom lived in countries at war with France. Secondly, the term friendship, inherited from diplomatic practices of the Ancien Régime, was often paired with the closely related concept of fraternity. Through the examination of a diversity of archival sources, spanning from letters between official to political speeches, newspapers, and revolutionary songs, this nuanced analysis reveals subtle difference in usage between friendship and fraternity and a gradual shift from friendship among states to fraternity among nations. By addressing the use of friendship in the context of foreign policy, this contribution investigates the evolution in the understanding of the relationship between the state and the nation, on the one hand; and of the relationship with foreign nations and states, on the other.
