This book studies the French Basque country’s process of acquisition of a stereotypical regional identity in the long nineteenth century. It maintains that, albeit originating in pre-‘modern’ customs, the standardised and clichéd character of Basque identity, as it emerged in the nineteenth century, was a product of the ‘modern’ age of nationalism. The book identifies the turning point for the creation of the ‘modern’ region in the French Revolution of 1789 that replaced privilege with language as the marker of identity of provincial France. The shift from privilege to ‘culture’ prompted local elites to reconceptualise the position of their locality within the new nation-state. The book contributes to a growing body of literature that regards Europe’s regional identities in the age of nationalism as invented ‘imagined communities’ which became an essential and validating aspect of nation-building. Since Basque-speaking communities lived in both French and Spanish territory, the invention of the Basque region had paradoxical consequences. On the one hand, it strengthened the cultural unity of the French and Spanish Basque provinces, which, in turn, challenged the authority of the central state. On the other, regional culture, like the German Heimaten, favoured the integration of the Basque provinces into the French nation-state. Thus, the story of Basque region-building in the age of French nationalism is revealing of the oxymoronic relationship between Jacobin centralisation and omnipresent regionalism that has defined the dominant idea of France since 1789.