BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

2. HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF NATIONAL IDENTITY
Historians have wrestled with the question of national identity for many decades, even
though terminology has changed. References to “national character” have fallen out of favor,
largely because the phrase conjures up unwonted associations with nineteenth-century
stereotypes of innate and unchangeable national difference. 1 “National identity” avoids the
suggestion of preordained traits or deterministic classification schemes while still conveying the
reflexive sense of individual selfhood as well as group consensus about what constitutes
nationhood. And though national identity clearly differs from deliberate nationalism, and implies
neither patriotism nor chauvinism, the connection between the two concepts has engendered a
chicken-and-egg debate among historians. Did national identity in some form preexist modern
nation-states and nationalism, or did it have to be invented after their creation? Notwithstanding
this ongoing controversy between so-called perennialists and modernists, the fictive nature of
both national identity and nationalism goes virtually unchallenged. 2 Nor does anyone deny that
1 An example of “character” used as a virtual synonym for identity can be found in Charles
Royster’s A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character,
1775-1783 (New York: Norton, 1981). The author discusses American providentialism and
overconfidence in military potential that worked to the detriment of logistical and monetary
considerations during the American Revolution (and arguably still does in America’s wars
abroad).
2 Perennialism allows for continuity between modern conceptions of nationality and older
references to nations as distinct breeds or races of people associated with particular territories,
and it stresses the recurring psychological need for group identification in different historical
contexts. Perennialism differs from primordialism in its lack of insistence upon an organic
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