CHAUVIN — NOTES
Nicolas Chauvin, the mythical super-patriot, was declared to have been born in Rochefort, France, and reported to have flourished in the late 18th Century and early 19th Century. He was a French soldier under the First Republic (the French Revolution) and the Empire (the Napoleonic armies). He was reported to have been born circa 1780, enlisted in Napoleon’s army at age 18, fought in numerous campaigns and wounded 17 times. He showed great courage, and being severely wounded and mutilated, he received from Napoleon a sword (a saber of honor), a red ribbon, and a pension of 200 francs.
He nourished a blind idolatry for his hero, Napoleon. His enthusiasm for the emperor and his professions of militant patriotism won for him the ridicule of his comrades and gave rise to the term, “chauvinism”, the eponym for blind and excessive nationalism. The character was developed by Arrago in searching for the etymology of “chauvinism” for the Dictionnaire de la Conversation, 1834, (which I have not seen).
Presently, exaggerated and excessive nationalism has become a modern social phenomenon. It exalts consciousness of nationality to the extent of spreading hatred of minorities and foreign nations. Hannah Arendt in “Imperialism, Nationalism, Chauvinism,” The Review of Politics, provides an interesting understanding of the concept:
Chauvinism is an almost natural product of the national concept insofar as it springs directly from the old idea of the ‘national mission’. . . .(A) nation’s mission might be interpreted precisely as bringing its light to other, less fortunate peoples that, for whatever reason, have miraculously been left by history without a national mission. As long as this concept did not develop into the ideology of chauvinism and remained in the rather vague realm of national or even nationalistic pride, it frequently resulted in a high sense of responsibility for the welfare of backward peoples.” [p. 457]
Nationalism is associated with militarism, imperialism and racism. Chauvinism may currently be applied to xenophobia, Christian fundamentalism, ethnocentrism, male chauvinism, etc., or for basically any persecution of out-groups by in-groups. If one were culturally astute, one would be politically correct, (to equate the two), and, therefore, one would not be a chauvinist.
Ultimately, chauvinism is the fanatical attack of the true believer on the government, stirring to life a complacent and even “decadent” society through a leader who knows the process of religiofication to ignite a national virility. Such fanaticism is an important invention, “a miraculous instrument for raising societies and nations from the dead — an instrument of resurrection.” (Hoffer)
Chauvin was lampooned frequently on the French stage in the 1830s, as in a play by Eugène Scribe, called Le soldat laboureur. (The citation may have been wrong, I have not seen that text, and one comprehensive list does not contain that title). His first appearance was in a vaudeville, La Cocarde Tricolore, episode de la guerre d’Alger, by the brothers Cogniard, Charles Théodore and Jean Hippolyte (1831).
Chauvin came to typify the cult of military glory that was popular after 1815, among the veterans of Napoleon’s armies. It is probably the effect of the Napoleonic wars on Napoleon’s soldiers that contributed significance to the concept of “nationalism” and not anything that Napoleon himself said. Throughout the Nineteenth Century, French chauvinists called for the regeneration of the spirit that had electrified the Napoleonic armies. British chauvinism became “jingoism”, and chauvinism and jingoism were matched by “100 percent Americanism”.
(Generally, the preceding was taken from the following secondary sources: Encyclopedia Americana; Webster Biographical Dictionary; New Century Cyclopedia of Names, Encyclopedia Britannica.)
What conjectures follow in the script presume those simple facts from secondary sources, and of some facts of historical chronology for the post-Napoleonic period.
However, I need to emphasize this: the facts have been supplemented and amplified by the creation of a multitude of fictions. For example, the author has Chauvin being born July 4, 1776, and being conscripted into the Revolutionary army at 17, in 1793, at the time of the Reign of Terror. Someone has taken those dates as a claim to truth and castigated the author for concocting “fictions”. Shame, for such lazy inattention to what I said. Playwrights have always used poetic license to turn historical facts (of which there are, in this case, very few) around for dramatic effect.
Some of the ideas behind the plays are discussed in the Peroration page, which is a general summing up.
(Last updated on February 16, 2005)
