 Chinese self-identification as a "yellow race" predated such European racial concepts.This European analysis, which first appeared in Great Britain, was then carried on in France by such people as Boulainvilliers, Nicolas Fréret, and then, during the 1789 French Revolution, Sieyès, and afterwards, Augustin Thierry and Cournot.Boulainvilliers, who created the matrix of such racist discourse in medieval France, conceived of the "race" as being something closer to the sense of a "nation", that is, in his time, the "race" meant the "people".