Choice Review

Romani (King's College, Cambridge) explores the longevity and relative constancy of stereotypical views of "national character" and their influence on political and economic discussions in Britain and France from the Enlightenment to the 20th century. While tradition attributed national differences to the influence of climate, Enlightenment thinkers argued that the mores of a people derived from its government, whether liberal or despotic. Nineteenth-century Romantics reversed this view, arguing that governments must correspond to a people's primordial nature in order to endure. Britons tended to link British liberty with economic success and industrial advance, while Frenchmen often sought to explain France's perceived economic backwardness compared with the enterprising English. The author convincingly demonstrates the legacy of subjective notions of national character on the emergence of the social sciences in both nations. This reviewer's only concern is that Romani's focus on continuity rather than change in national character at times seems to reify the stereotypes he seeks to examine critically. No bibliography, but extensive footnotes. This provocative, erudite, and well-crafted work of traditional intellectual history will interest all scholars of national identity and political theory. Upper-division undergraduates and above. D. A. Harvey New College of Florida