For some historians, a ‘national spirit’ did emerge inside the Burgundian state and can be seen in the literature and art of the period and in noble brotherhoods such as the Order of the Golden Fleece. In this chapter, I propose a final reflection on the meaning of ‘nation’ in the Middle Ages. If a nation is an ‘imagined community’, as Benedict Anderson suggested, then it would seem that there was no Burgundian nation. This failure of Burgundy to emerge as a nation was not simply the product of its different languages, lack of a capital or diverse heritages in territories such as Flanders, Artois, Hainaut, Brabant and Burgundy. The core of the problem was rather the gap between the political ideology of the northern towns, whose power since the twelfth century had been based on a negotiated contract between princes and people, and the political ideology of the princes themselves, inspired as it was by their monarchical French legacy.

The Great Principality of Burgundy is a patchwork of territories. So how did princes of Burgundy perceive their own space of power? What was the opinion of a peasant of Dijon? Did he feel French, Burgundian or ‘dijonnais’? Here, the question of geographical perception (frontiers, limits, names of states, etc.) is examined in order to assess whether the multiplicity of Burgundian territories could have been be subsumed into an overarching political entity. This chapter is an essay in historical geography which seeks to outline the sovereign space of Burgundian power.

The three last chapters are devoted to the topic of the absence of any sense of community. According to Charles Tilly and other historians who have followed him, wars can help to build the state. When people fight against a common enemy, they develop a sense of belonging to the same community. This chapter shows that although the dukes of Burgundy were engaged in constant warfare and created perfectly organised armies, their subjects did not share this sense of a common enemy.

A further key cause of Burgundian political differences was the issue of sovereignty. Before the reign of Charles the Bold, the dukes saw themselves as French princes and there was no idea of an independent state until 1473 and the creation of the Parliament of Malines. Charles the Bold was the architect of this project, and his idea of sovereign power was linked to kingship and his desire for a crown, whatever it was. But the crown was not enough, and a prince needed to create a unified community with his people if he was to be successful.

This chapter sets out the structure of the Great Principality of Burgundy (princes, territories, institutions). It shows that even though the dukes mastered the art of public communication (via ceremonies, ducal feasts, propaganda by letters and manifestoes, etc.), they did not necessarily succeed in forging emotional bonds with their subjects.

The Burgundian state is a useful concept for historians seeking to understand this political entity, even though it was not considered as a separate state by its own princes until Charles the Bold. The last duke of Burgundy, whose attempts to build an independent state came to an end with his violent and premature death in in 1477, was the only one who thought of Burgundy as an independent state. In pursuing this goal, he tried to obtain a royal crown, but his failure to do so meant that Burgundy remained an ‘unachieved kingdom’. For his subjects, their primary political loyalty was to their town rulers in the north and to the French king in the south.

The introduction begins with an example in medias res with the experience of an officer of Charles the Bold who visited the county of Alsace in winter 1473. His work was hard and dangerous, and he had to determine the different taxes that were to be collected. His own declaration about his work is clear: he did his best, not to strengthen the Burgundian state but to please his lord. His experience perfectly introduces the wider question of the nature of the power at the end of the Middle Ages. What did state officials see as the nature of their duties, and what were the expectations of their prince? The originality of the argument is emphasised by means of a historiographical review of earlier studies of the subject and a presentation of the different definitions of the state which medieval historians have adopted. The challenge has been to develop a political history from ground level. So the history of Burgundian power is analysed in the context of the fifteenth century itself, rather than according to the preconceptions of modern historians.

At the heart of Burgundian political disagreements and difficulties was the lack of unity inherent in a state which consisted of a large patchwork of duchies, counties, dominions, etc. Caught between France and Germany and between French overlordship and Flemish economic interests with England, the dukes often switched from one policy option to another.