Introduction: The long life of characters

Ubiquitous and elusive: this is how the theory of national characters appears in nineteenth-century French political thought. One could also add “mysterious”. I arrived at national characters in fact—as you can read in my article featured in this issue—via a mystery that Gustave de Beaumont left unsolved in his L'Irlande.¹ Indeed, it was the wish to explain it that propelled me to explore the theory of national characters, firstly as regards Great Britain and then followed by Germany and France. Altogether, the idea was hatched to gather around this theme the voices of certain scholars specialized in this field. Finding them proved hard; although it is indeed the case that the theme of national characters exists in countless works with a focus on nineteenth-century France and Europe and on nationalism, there is not one single work specifically focused on the theme.² This monographic issue precisely seeks to deal with this issue in a specific way.

First of all, a terminological question: in the theory of national characters present in nineteenth-century French political thought (to which these essays are dedicated), does the terminology deal with “caractères nationaux”, “âmes des peuples” or “génies nationaux”? The workshop from which these essays derive was divided on the matter: while some of those in attendance were in favour of the “characters” option (myself included), others instead (such as Regina Pozzi) opted for “âmes nationales”. Marion Moreau informed us that, as regards her field, known as the “Slavic soul”, there were only a few instances of the wording “âme slave” ou “génie slave” in the corpus of documents that she had examined. Use of “génie” was probably the most anodyne among the three. I am personally convinced that the use of the three terms is as indifferent as the content. Nevertheless, my preference is for the term “national character”, as it seems to have a denser meaning, pointing to a unitary personality referring to a collective entity, as well as having a direct reference to psychology, similarity to the individual character and its mix of innate and acquired. It may be the case, however, that continued research brings to light new evidence and makes me change my idea. The fact is that, thus far, the subject has often been brought up but rarely explored in depth or comprehensively. It is as though the theory of national characters was something obvious and it remains as such for us. For this reason, too, I felt propelled to work on the subject: in an attempt to set in stone a few less ambiguous points concerning the authors, the courses and meaning of national characters in French political thought of the nineteenth century.

This collection does not intend to reconstruct the theory of national characters in its entirety: we would have to go back so far in time that the task would prove colossal. Neither regarding the central issue of the major influence on the formation of the national character of the climate or of spiritual factors has it been our intention to rebuild in a wide-ranging way: too many authors have discussed this over time, backing one theory or another. On the contrary, our starting point was the observation of a fracture that took place between the influence of the climate by a large number of writers from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century (from Fontenelle to Du Bos and Montesquieu) and the epoch ushered in by the Revolution: firstly, the climate determines the nature of the peoples and works with the race to differentiate the world into active and passive people, creators of great works or incapable persons, whereby moral and political causes are deemed ineffectual. On the contrary, even the government seems to be linked to the climate and reliant upon it. At first there was Hume, with his critique of the national character. Then, in France, this move took place between Montesquieu and the nineteenth century, with emphasis being placed on the nation and the consideration that events that occur within the nation’s boundaries are unitary; it...