Chapter 6 investigates the changes in the notion of national character within the debate on the origins of France between the mid-eighteenth century and the Restoration. Analysing the texts of authors such as the abbé Mably, the abbé Velly, Gabriel Brizard, and Mme. de Lézardière and showing the influence of Montesquieu’s own writings, the argument is made that discussions about national and class character became fundamental in justifying political authority. In particular the chapter shows that an important assumption influencing the arguments of these and other authors was that an ‘ethnic’ group could claim to represent the entire nation only by proving that it had always embodied the true French character – be it the bravery of the nobles, the alleged descendants of the Franks, or the industriousness of the bourgeois, the supposed offspring of the Gauls.

Chapter 5 examines the crucial role played by Montesquieu in defining national character as a narrative frame. The first section of the chapter focusses on his historical thought and the fundamental role he played in shaping the histoire philosophique – as Hugh Trevor-Roper and, more recently, J.A.G. Pocock have argued. The emphasis is on the importance that Montesquieu attributed to the social and anthropological reasons underlying legal and political changes. In the next part of the chapter the relationship between moral and physical causes in shaping a nation’s character, so central to many of his writings, is investigated. Building on and going beyond the interpretations of Georges Benrekassa and Jean Erhard, the chapter argues that moral and physical causes were both understood by the baron as historical processes – even though of a different nature. National character was at once a result of history and the thread with which the nation’s history could be woven. Through it, moreover, the legitimacy of political institutions could be assessed and their ‘rationality’, as Montesquieu would have said, verified. The final section considers the crucial role played by Montesquieu in the debate opposing the Germanists and the Romanists in the debate over the origins of the French nation.

The chapter examines the history of the notion of national character in eighteenth-century France. Used initially in novels and plays to define an actor whose conduct could be predicted thanks to his ‘inner nature’, the concept was later used in historical writings to explain and understand, and even predict, the way entire nations acted. The main argument of this chapter is that, rather than being conceived as an unchanging and natural phenomenon, national character was increasingly understood as gradually changing throughout the ages, mainly thanks to education. Remarkably, many related the inclinations of individuals to those of the nation, a point that raised the issue of the individual’s freedom and his relationship with the community he was part of. Consequently, and especially from the 1730s onwards, the perceived decadence of France was related to the alleged debasing of the nation’s character, a fact that gave the notion a central place in all debates on political legitimacy. The chapter stresses that the national character was understood as a cultural frame within which the nation’s history deployed itself and which, albeit slowly, was also changing.