De geschiedenis van opvattingen over het nationale karakter van de Engelsen in de afgelopen twee eeuwen.

First published in 1927, National Character is based upon a course of ten lectures on citizenship, delivered, under the terms of the Stevenson Foundation, in the University and the City of Glasgow during the latter part of 1925 and the beginning of 1926. The author argues that to see how nations have become what they are may be the best way of discovering how they can make themselves other than what they are. Divided into two parts-the material factors and the spiritual factors, the book discusses themes like race, territory and climate, population and occupation, growth of national spirit, law and government, influence of churches, role of literature and thought, and ideas and system of education to understand the factors behind the formation of national character. This is an important historical reference work for scholars and researchers of political studies and political philosophy.

Although Lu Xun was a leading intellectual and writer in twentieth century China, and his representative character Ah Q, hero of "The True Story of Ah Q," is considered an iconic repository of progressive Chinese thinking about the national character, few works examine the major discourses in his thought and writing relative to broader historical and intellectual currents outside the context of his politicization. Ah Q Archaeology, however, concretely situates Lu Xun's critique of national character vis-a-vis metanarratives of nationalism and modernity through a close examination of his works in their historical context. Paul B. Foster uses a discursive approach to tie together Lu Xun's major theme of national character critique and its fate in China's tumultuous twentieth century. This book is an important and unique contribution to modern Chinese intellectual history and modern Chinese literature.

In a work of unusual ambition and rigorous comparison, Roberto Romani considers the concept of 'national character' in the intellectual histories of Britain and France. Perceptions of collective mentalities influenced a variety of political and economic debates, ranging from anti-absolutist polemic in eighteenth-century France to appraisals of socialism in Edwardian Britain. Romani argues that the eighteenth-century notion of 'national character', with its stress on climate and government, evolved into a concern with the virtues of 'public spirit' irrespective of national traits, in parallel with the establishment of representative institutions on the Continent. His discussion of contemporary thinkers includes Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume, Millar, Burke, Constant, de Staël and Tocqueville. After the mid-nineteenth century, the advent of social scientific approaches, including those of Spencer, Hobson and Durkheim, shifted the focus from the qualities required by political liberty to those needed to operate complex social systems, and to bear its psychological pressures.