Toque roots are sometimes traced to the "casque à meche" (stocking cap) worn by 18th-century French chefs. The colour of the "casque à meche" denoted the rank of the wearer. Boucher, the personal chef of the French statesman Talleyrand, was the first to insist on white toques for sanitary reasons. The modern toque is popularly believed to have originated with the French chef Marie-Antoine Carême (1784–1833), who stiffened the "casque à meche" with cardboard . The pleated, low, round hat worn in French universities the equivalent of the mortarboard or tam at British and American universities is also called a toque.
What Is a Nation? What Is a Nation? "What is a Nation?" ("Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?") is an 1882 lecture by French historian Ernest Renan (1823–1892), known for the statements that a nation is "a daily referendum", and that nations are based as much on what the people jointly forget, as what they remember. It is frequently quoted or anthologized in works of history or political science pertaining to nationalism and national identity. Renan wrote "What is a Nation" in order to symbolize the nationalism which was born in France as a result of the French Revolution of 1789. Renan begins his essay by noting