Taking advantage of what have been learned about “Japanese collectivism,” this chapter theoretically examines cultural stereotype, which is a simplified and distorted image of a culture. The cultural stereotype tends to create the following four basic illusions: uniformity (“The Japanese are all collectivists”), polarity (“The Japanese are collectivists, whereas the Americans are individualists”), determinacy (“Japanese culture causes Japanese collectivism”), and permanency (“Japanese collectivism is immutable”). Contrary to the illusions of uniformity and polarity, actual data typically show large individual difference within each group, and the distributions of individual difference typically have a large overlap between groups. Contrary to the illusion of determinacy, human behavior tends to be affected more strongly by situation than by culture. Contrary to the illusion of permanency, culture as well as human mind and behavior tends to change as a result of intellectual activity and situational change.

Chapter 3 explores how Pseudo-Hegesippus uses the figure of the patriarch Abraham, along with several other biblical heroes, to drive a variegated discourse of Jewish ethnography throughout De Excidio. By zeroing in on two passages where Abraham and other Bible figures are used to talk about “what the Jews are like” (i.e., ethnic stereotyping), Pseudo-Hegesippus shows himself familiar with ancient ethnographic conventions and uses ethnography to present various pictures of the Jewish national character in the mouths of both Roman and Jewish narrative characters.

Chapter 2 looks at seamen who were ‘aliens’ (non-subjects), and shows that legal distinctions ultimately mattered little to the Navy. Britain was rather open to immigration, and during wartime most residual disabilities of non-subjects were eased for common sailors, who were needed and overall welcome. At the same time, military necessity meant that any advantages which their status as subjects of a different sovereign should have afforded them, most notably protection from impressment (forced service), were often ignored in practice. In courts martial, special accommodations and concessions were granted informally, as a result of perceived cultural ignorance, rather than on the basis of legal status. Finally, naturalisation was liberally bestowed on naval seamen, but it was, this chapter argues, a largely irrelevant benefit. The state was very quick to revoke its protection if this clashed with native allegiances, and during wartime the alien sailor, already allowed to work in both the Navy and merchant vessels, did not stand to gain much from being naturalised. If individual seamen strategically navigated legal status and national allegiances, so did the state itself: when in need of manpower, it did not hesitate to treat its own legal categories and subjecthood boundaries as pliable.

National identity represents one of the most central and defining group identities in the modern world with important implications in everyday life. In the current chapter, we review the extant literature from political psychology on nationhood by considering two key dimensions of national identity: (a) identification and attachment; and (b) its content. First, we explore the vast literature on national identification, and consider two forms of national attachment (patriotism and nationalism) alongside its societal implications. Within this focus, we consider national identification and disidentification and its consequences among majority, minority, and immigrant groups. We then review the political psychology literature on the content and meaning of nationhood by distinguishing between ethnic and civic national character, consider its societal implications, and consider research on implicit and explicit psychological representations of nationhood. We conclude by highlighting some key directions for future research on national identity within political psychology.

The chapter uncovers the role that Grotius’ philosophy of virtues plays in defining and renegotiating the sphere of law in peace; its distinct roles during and after war; the conditions in which Grotius used virtues as a benchmark to correct and evolve law; and the conditions in which he thought that law can rightfully ignore the calls of virtue. Grotius’ function for virtue in law is then compared to conventional roles assigned to religion in correcting and stimulating law. The chapter brings out the coherence of Grotius’ theory of virtue and law as he applied it to diverse real-life problems and themes, ranging from Iberian-Dutch encounters through his justification of free trade to the doctrinal minimalism that Grotius regarded as the best chance of saving the United Provinces from religious strife. The distinctive rights and duties of sovereigns, magistrates, soldiers, slaves, citizens and Christians are finally explained in light of Grotius’ virtue - law dynamic.

The third chapter analyses Forster’s transformation of the opera-box literary trope of seduction into a riotous opera scene in his first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread. Describing a performance of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammemoor, the scene is liberally scattered with allusions to nineteenth-century literary texts (such as Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Scott's Bride of Lammermoor) and to national stereotypes about musical idiosyncrasies (such as those described in Baedeker's guidebook and in Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad). Arguing that Forster’s parodic use of these allusions reflects both his negotiation of the weightiness of literary heritage and his participation in topical debates about national character, the chapter considers his stylistic and ideological ambitions for his debut novel. The chapter brings together considerations of the novel’s literary history and its national politics. Unearthing what lies beneath the beguiling social comedy of the novel, the chapter puts its emphasis on the intertextual and contextual resonances of the opera scene, analysing them as evidence of Forster’s strategy of writing against existing material to distinguish his debut work from others.

This chapter examines connections between climatic determinist accounts of civilization and the tendency toward climate reductionism in recent writings on climate change and future societal collapse. It examines the writings of a sequence of key historical figures, notably, Hippocrates, Ibn Khaldūn, Montesquieu, and Buckle. Thereafter the work of a range of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American writers including the chemist-historian John William Draper, geographers Ellsworth Huntington and Ellen Semple, and medical practitioners William Petersen and Clarence Mills are reviewed. Scrutiny of their pronouncements reveals the intimate connections such figures perceived between climate and health, wealth, war, eugenics, temperament, and civilization more generally. The essay foregrounds continuities between these proposals and the writings of some contemporary commentators on climate and economics, and on the implications of climate change for the future of human society.

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.

Most travellers based their opinions on information provided by classical authors, who were considered more authoritative than contemporary writers. Attitudes towards foreigners in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were exacerbated by religious antagonism far more than in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But once the Catholic Church had ceased its campaign of harassing those who followed other religions, Protestant travellers became more open about stigmatizing the character of inhabitants of Catholic lands. A positive perception of the French national character seems predominant throughout the evolution of the Grand Tour. Evidence of this widespread appreciation of French manners is the fact that France had gained the highest reputation in Europe for the art of good living. The international admiration for Italian Renaissance culture came to an end with the Counter-Reformation, when many well-educated sectors of society in non-Catholic countries began to develop ambiguous attitudes towards Italy. Most foreign visitors reported that they were truly mesmerized by the fragmentation of the country and the proliferation of different urban realities – so much that they came across a plethora of epithets and proverbs representing the singular features of Italian cities and the local character of the citizens.