France could seize the idea of Europe, identify itself with it, and usurp it as identical with France’s conception of itself. The country that first invented the idea of the sovereign nation-state and made nationalism into a civic religion thus found it quite natural to see itself—with the same emotional commitment that was once invested in “la patrie”—as the embodiment of an independent but united Europe. The grandeur of a French-led Europe would then be France’s as well.
