Revanchism

How it is used

Use when remembered defeat and recovery shape policy; not every territorial claim is revanchist.

Example sentences

1. The newspaper linked military rebuilding to a language of revanchism.

   Past defeat supplies the motive for renewed confrontation.

2. The historian found little revanchism in the veterans' demands for pensions.

   Veterans' interests need not include reversing a lost war.

Common collocations

• postwar revanchism
• revanchist politics

Related terms

• nationalismThe idea that people who share a language, culture or history form a nation, and that this nation should have its own state or govern itself.
• world warA war in which most of the world's major powers take part and fighting spreads across several continents; in practice, the wars of 1914–1918 and 1939–1945.

More terms: Wars, Treaties and Diplomacy

• treaty
• conquest
• armistice
• alliance
• siege
• Cold War
• annex
• campaign
• propaganda
• casus belli
• irredentism
• gunboat diplomacy