The other idea which Mazzini promoted was the idea of a 'family of nations': if the world was divided up into nations, then they could, through identification and self-determination, be encouraged to acquire independence. The result would, on this new basis. For the French writer Ernest Renan nationalism was 'a daily plebiscite', a process by which a community, created by history, could constantly reaffirm, by its continued existence, its self-determination and its wishes.