The question of nationality, imperialism and nationalism has been a central feature of political debates on the Left. During the French Revolution, nationalism was a key policy of the Republican Left. The Republican Left advocated for civic nationalism and argued that the nation is a "daily plebiscite" formed by the subjective "will to live together". Related to revanchism, the belligerent will to take revenge against Germany and retake control of Alsace-Lorraine, nationalism was sometimes opposed to imperialism. In the 1880s, there was a debate between leftists such as the Radical Georges Clemenceau, the Socialist Jean Jaurès and the nationalist Maurice Barrès, who argued that colonialism diverted France from liberating the "blue line of the Vosges", in reference to Alsace-Lorraine; and the "colonial lobby" such as Jules Ferry of the Moderate Republicans, Léon Gambetta of the Republicans and Eugène Etienne, the president of the Parliamentary Colonial Group. After the antisemitic Dreyfus Affair in which officer Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted of sedition and exiled to a penal colony in 1894 before being exonerated in 1906, nationalism in the form of Boulangism increasingly became associated with the far-right.
The question of nationality, imperialism and nationalism has been a central feature of political debates on the Left. During the French Revolution nationalism was a key policy of the Republican Left. The Republican Left advocated for civic nationalism and argued that the nation is a "daily plebiscite" formed by the subjective "will to live together". Related to revanchism, the belligerent will to take revenge against Germany and retake control of Alsace-Lorraine, nationalism was sometimes opposed to imperialism. In the 1880s, there was a debate between leftists such as the Radical Georges Clemenceau, the Socialist, Jean Jaurès and the nationalist Maurice Barrès, who argued that colonialism diverted France from liberating the "blue line of the Vosges", in reference t,o Alsace-Lorraine; and the "colonial lobby" such as Jules Ferry of the Moderate Republicans, Léon Gambetta of the Republicans and Eugène Etienne the president of the Parliamentary Colonial Group. After the antisemitic Dreyfus Affair in which officer Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted of sedition and exiled to a penal colony in 1894 before being exonerated in 1906, nationalism in the form of Boulangism increasingly became associated with the far-right.