I've read that medieval cities and townships didn't ever conceive of themselves as say "french" in any real sense, even though when we look back at the history we often refer to things like "the nation of France". The ancient Greeks had the concept of the polis. And of course history is littered with empires. But where did the "nation state" come from? When did it start? When did the actual people, not just the monarchs, consider themselves to be living in a nation and that they were the same as the village a hundred miles away, because they were all "french", and not a collection of villages that viewed their neighboring villages as foreign?

Obviously I don't mean to limit this to France. I'm just using that as an example.