National Character and Public Spirit in Britain and France 1750 1914

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 public spirit irrespective of national traits in parallel with the establishment of representative institutions on the Continent.