Excellent comment, thanks. In the case of Europe while France does maintain a sense of paternity with its former colonies in Africa its willingness to participate in supra-national experiments like the European Union indicate that it sees itself as one of a group of similar countries with a shared historical identity.

Your point about Americans believing in the unique greatness of our ‘experiment in democracy is spot on. I remember a blogger once making the obvious point that parliamentary systems- such as yours in New Zealand- are more democratic in an absolute sense than the US system and receiving a torrent of abusive dissent. Institutions that might have made sense in 1789 but don’t now are kept in place due to a slavish deification of the founding fathers. This is something that reinforces exceptionalism, in my view.

I disagree that exceptionalism doesn’t exist elsewhere and that it’s cause is size. Couldn’t Nazism be seen as a kind of Teutonic exceptionalism? Or that exceptionalism played a part in Nazism? Didn’t exceptionalism play a role in European and Japanese empire building as well? I don’t see how these attitudes have disappeared – apparently Europe is still far more civilised than the rest of the world, and which country is the most civilised depends entirely, of course, on who you’re talking to (the correct answer is always, of course, France. Unless the person you’re talking to is not French…) I’m sure you’ll find exceptionalist attitudes in the South Pacific.

I was most amused a couple of days ago to read of French feathers getting a little ruffled over the sudden influx of US military personnel into Haiti. Un tout petit peu de jalousie, peut etre? Can’t have those Anglo-Saxons getting involved in la Francophonie, lest it remind the French of the sorry state of their own empire. Speaking of which, France is still very protective of and involved in its and Belgium’s former empires… a look at the post-independence histories of Algeria and Centrafrique, for example, may reveal some of the kind of meddling the CIA is so famous for. But of course, France is no longer all arrogant and imperialistic like those Yankees. No, not at all.

And I think the cause has more to do with culture and history than size. For China, it’s the long history, and it’s disturbing the sheer number of Chinese who think that China has the longest history of any country, or that Chinese characters were the first form of writing ever. Combine that with the reaction against Euro-American and Japanese imperialism from the 19th century onwards. And I’m always disturbed by otherwise liberal, open-minded Americans who insist that America is the world’s greatest ever experiment in democracy. Because it is. Don’t argue, it is dammit. And no, I won’t listen to your arguments or reasons, or present you with any logical argument in support of my claim, because I’m right and that’s that.

Sure, sheer size and economic success play a large part in exaggerating Chinese and American exceptionalism, but I think the cause lies more in how people construct and process national identity, and so I think exceptionalism is something you’ll find in every country (it’s just that the rest of the world tends to be a bit quieter about it).