BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

cultivating citizens and patriots; the easy association of national identity with political ideologies
and motives, authoritarian or libertarian; and the crucial role of media and cultural venues, from
academic literature and opera houses to daily newspapers and music halls, in shaping national
identity. 36 Grew saw the need for more work on the modern state’s claim to neutrality as an
incentive to patriotism and on the interfaces between “official” histories and popular culture,
particularly the appeal and utility of national stereotypes in defining and shaping acceptable
codes of thought and behavior. Grew suggested a pre-modern source for national stereotypes in
the differentiation and characterization of European aristocracies through an early literary genre
that provided a template for the categorization of modern nation-states and whole populations.
Grew’s interest in national stereotypes found support in Orest Ranum’s emphasis on the
vital importance of counter-identities in shaping early modern national identity, notably in the
context of moral, aesthetic and historical comparisons that denied to the other any claim to divine
favor, diplomatic trustworthiness, virtuous habits or physical attractiveness. 37 Ranum laid out
some pre-Enlightenment commonplaces that, in their accentuation of aesthetic, moral and
political difference, closely resemble modern tropes of national identity and foreign otherness.
He found a parallel with modern ruralism in much older encomiums on the physical beauty and
divine providence bestowed on the patria, and he recognized precursors of modern national
36 Ibid. Works cited by Grew, in addition to those already mentioned here, include:
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso and NLB, 1983); E. H. Carr,
Nationalism and After (New York: Macmillan, 1945); Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (London:
Hutchinson, 1962); Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States: An Inquiry into the Origins of
Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1977).
37 “Counter-Identities of Western European Nations in the Early-Modern Period:
Definitions and Points of Departure,” in Boerner, Concepts of National Identity, 63-78.
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