Introduction: The long life of characters

• Published in: The Tocqueville review 2014-01, Vol.35 (1), p.7-26
• Main Author: Nacci, Michela
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0730-479X; 1918-6649
• DOI: 10.3138/ttr.35.1.7

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. This monographic issue precisely seeks to deal with this issue in a specific way.