To mark the 100 year commemorations of the Representation of the People Act, the Education Service worked with professional film-maker Nigel Kellaway, to engage young people (aged 16-19) with suffrage records held at The National Archives.
Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?”, text of a conference delivered at the Sorbonne on March 11th, 1882, in Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?, Paris, Presses-Pocket, 1992. (translated by Ethan Rundell)
I propose to analyze with you an idea which, though apparently clear, lends itself to the most dangerous misunderstandings. The forms of human society are of the greatest variety. They include great agglomerations of men after the fashion of China, Egypt, and ancient Babylonia; tribes such as the Hebrews and the Arabs; city-states on the Athenian and Spartan model; reunions of diverse countries such as were to be found under the Carolingian Empire; communities such as the Israelites and the parsis, lacking a country and maintained by religious bonds; nations like France, England, and most other modern, autonomous polities; confederations after the fashion of Switzerland and America; the great families that race, or rather language, has established between the different branches of Germans, the different branches of Slavs. Such are the types of groupings that exist, or rather existed, and that one confuses only at the price of the most serious inconvenience. At the time of the...