What Is a Nation? offers a new translation of the famous speech of the same name that renowned historian, philologist, and philosopher Ernest Renan delivered at the Sorbonne in 1882. Responding to the controversies of his time — foremost amongst them, Germany’s annexation of the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine following the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) — Renan develops a critical, historically-informed theory of nationhood at odds with many of his era’s prevailing conceptions.

The text of Renan’s speech is followed by an afterword by the historian and political philosopher Nathalie Krikorian-Duronsoy, who seeks to rescue Renan’s thought from the superficial reading to which it has long been subjected, setting his theory of the nation in the context of his broader thought and arguing for its continued relevance to contemporary debates regarding national identity and the future of the European nation state.