Victorian Political Thought on France and the French.(Book Review)

Victorian Political Thought on France and the French, by Georgios Varouxakis; pp. xi + 223. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, [pounds sterling]60.00, $75.00.

In the epilogue to his clear-headed account of the views of France held by English public intellectuals (Stefan Collini's "public moralists"), Georgios Varouxakis suggests that Victorian assessments of the French can be usefully compared with those made by recent commentators on France's national temperament, to determine who came "closest among the Victorians to offering a diagnosis that accords with what political theorists, political scientists and historians have come to think of French political culture with the benefit of hindsight" (170). To assume that we see better in hindsight is an odd thing to do, especially at the end of a book whose primary assumption is that the Victorians' own vision of the French was the product of a particular set of discursive glasses. The emphasis on whether Victorians got France more or less right in retrospect also seems odd …