The second chapter studies the writings of the Comte de Boulainvilliers. The first part of the chapter concentrates on his historical thought. Using Lévi-Strauss’s notion of ‘anti-history’, it analyses Boulainvilliers’s published works and private correspondence and attempts to show that one of his basic intellectual concerns was the rejection of the royalist national narrative which equated the history of the royal families with that of the nation. The chapter goes on to examine the ways in which the count conceived of his new historical actor, the race of the nobles, as embodying the history of France. Criticizing the views expounded by Michel Foucault and by André Devyver, it highlights the difficulty of drawing a straight line from Boulainvilliers to modern racialism. Moreover, it contests the idea that his système was constructed entirely on the initial conquest of the Gauls by the Franks. The chapter argues that the identification of the nobles with the nation was made on a twofold principle. On the one hand they alone had sacrificed themselves for France, confirming, through their self-abnegation, that their interest was at one with the nation’s. On the other, and as a consequence, they alone had a history worth telling and recording, one identical to the nation’s.

The chapter begins by considering the historical thought of Augustin Thierry. Focussing on his rejection of the royalist paradigm and on his call for a shift to what might be seen as an ethnic understanding of history, the first part of the chapter takes into consideration his histoire critique. In particular, attention is paid to the technical narratives he employed for depicting a ‘faithful’ history of France – although, following Roland Barthes, the chapter highlights the contradictions of the ‘reality effect’ pursued by Thierry. More specifically, attention is drawn to the ambiguity of his substitution of the ‘monarchical myth’ with the ‘ethnic myth’. The second part of the chapter analyses in depth his writings on French history. Arguing against the views set forth by Marcel Gauchet on this point, it takes into account Thierry’s constant attempts to create an emphatic bond between his readers and the Gauls/bourgeois as the true and only ancestors of the modern French. In particular, the chapter emphasizes the importance of the rhetoric of sacrifice and highlights differences and analogies between Thierry’s and the nobles’ nationalist discourse.