Victor Hugo thought a great deal about the difficult relationship between France and Prussia. His family were from the unstable border regions of France and Germany. He considers the problem in Le Rhin, a travel book published in 1842 and re-edited in 1845. He made three trips with Juliette Drouet in 1838, 1839, and 1840, and these voyages formed the basis of a collection of mostly fictitious letters describing a single tour of the Rhineland. In Hugo’s opinion, shared with many French intellectuals of the period, the civilisation nearest to the Ideal was that of Europe:
‘There exists today a European nationality … Despite the various short-term antipathies and quarrels over borders, all the civilised nations belong to the same centre and are indissolubly linked by a secret and profound unity. Civilisation gives us all the same guts, the same mind, the same goal, the same future.’ [Preface to Les Burgraves, 1843.]
In Victor Hugo’s eyes Europe did not include Britain: ‘it took 140 years for Shakespeare to cross [the Channel]’. This was an unusual view at the time: the commonplace was that the French were the intellectuals, the Germans the designers, and the British the engineers, and that for humanity to progress all three nations needed to work together. However, Hugo did not wish Britain to remain outside Europe. Britain’s problem, for him, was that it was, at the time, too self-centred. Its ‘knowing the value of everything’ and its desire for dominance made it dangerous. It was totally immured in the ‘Material’, while Europe was seeking for the Ideal.
‘Islands are made to serve continents, not to dominate them …’
Hugo did not envisage or desire a Europe without nations or nationalities. Two great nations, France and Germany, working together would enable Europe to progress in peace and prosperity. He acknowledged that hoping for universal peace may be utopian, but ‘utopias, when they have the same aim as humanity … are the facts of the next century.’ In order to achieve this utopia, the world needs railways, served by a marine network run by Britain and France, and – this is Victor Hugo, after all – to speak French. France was always the centre and prime mover for Hugo and those who shared his views. Eventually, even Britain would see the error of her ways, throw off materialism, and take her rightful place as the workshop and merchandiser of Europe. Of course there would be internal wars and revolutions; but once the reasons for mutual hatred had disappeared, Europe – and by extension eventually humanity – would attain universal peace.