National Character and Public Spirit in Britain and France, 1750}}}1914 [Paperback]

This book offers an analysis of the concept of 'national character' in the intellectual histories of Britain and France.Despite its centrality in European thought, this is the first treatment of national character in intellectual history. Romani considers a distinction between 'national character' as a static and stereotype-laden concept, and 'public spirit' as a notion suggesting the necessity of certain qualities to operate free institutions. He argues that the contrast between these assessments of collective dispositions still influences our culture. Major authors of the period (including Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume, Burke, Tocqueville, Spencer, and Durkheim) are considered, amounting to a substantial reinterpretation of a central strand in post-Enlightenment European thought.Despite its centrality in European thought, this is the first treatment of national character in intellectual history. Romani considers a distinction between 'national character' as a static and stereotype-laden concept, and 'public spirit' as a notion suggesting the necessity of certain qualities to operate free institutions. He argues that the contrast between these assessments of collective dispositions still influences our culture. Major authors of the period (including Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume, Burke, Tocqueville, Spencer, and Durkheim) are considered, amounting to a substantial reinterpretation of a central strand in post-Enlightenment European thought.In a work of unusual ambition and rigorous comparison, Roberto Romani considers the concept of national character in the intellectual histories of Britain and France. Perceptions of collective mentalities influenced a variety of political and economic debates, ranging from anti-absolutist polemic in eighteenth-century France to appraisals of socialism in Edwardian Britain. Romani argues that the eighteenth-century notion of national character , with its stress on climate and government, evolved into a concern with the virtues of pls�