That may be beginning to change back. France seems to be much more willing to send troops overseas in the last 10 years or so.
I think that they’re finally getting over the national trauma that the world wars inflicted on them.
I prefer this version. Much more complete.
I wonder how far back the stereotype of Americans being oblivious to cultures other than their own goes.
As an American I couldn’t care less.
The idea that the French weren’t great warriors seems, like the idea that the British have bad teeth, a peculiar stereotype that the Americans hold.
Few in Europe who have spent the past 1000 years fighting the French think they have particularly lost the reputation of being a fighting nation.
That belongs to the Italians.
Only since WW2 though.
You might want to check how the Italians did in WW1 before you say things like that.
Beat the ever loving shit out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and make Germany’s position untenable after Vittorio Veneto?
The is largely true, based on the unique relation of consonants to vowels in Italian. This is one reason why Italian operas suffer when translated.
Being English, the stereotypes of other countries are (not that I believe most of them)
Welsh - Sheep shagging leek eaters
Scottish - Tight fisted skirt wearers
Irish - Potato eating stupid people
French - Cheese eating surrender monkeys
Belgians - Chocolate and beer!
Germans - “Don’t mention the war”
Spanish - Bullfighting, Paella eating lazy people
Italians - Pasta eating hand talkers who are always late
Americans - Fat people who will shoot you if you disrespect their flag
Australians - Beer and kangaroos
Japanese - Camera wearing tourists
English (I suppose I should include this one) - Tea drinkers in Bowler hats who have bad teeth
Sorry, I don’t understand this part. Could you explain?
To hear Andrew Boorde tell it, in the 16th century the Welsh were stereotyped for mainly two things: Thievery and Marian devotion. (Also a love of “rosted chese” and playing the harp)
In the Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge (written 1542, published 1547), Boorde presents the various national stereotypes—all of which are unflattering except for the first one, on Englishmen. The second chapter, beginning “I am a Welshman…” is about the Welsh, including these lines:
I loue our Lady, for I am of hyr kynne;
He that doth not loue her, I be-shrew his chynne.
Also, the crude woodcut illustrating the chapter shows a Welshman kneeling and praying to Mary.
I’m curious about Marian devotion as a Welsh stereotype, because no trace of it remains today, except for all the places in Wales named Llanfair, which means ‘Mary’s church’. I have searched but found no sources other than Boorde’s for an account of particular devotion to Mary in pre-Reformation Wales. Of course, by the time this was published, Welsh-ancestried Henry VIII had already initiated the English Reformation, which annihilated any sort of Marian cultus that may have existed, so the information was obsolete practically as soon as it was published.
P.S. What’s the reason for the Welsh claiming kinship with Mary?
There are medieval beliefs that her mother, St. Anne, was from Brittany; I would not be surprised to find the Welsh shared them. She found a boat on the shore, stepped in, and was transported to Palestine. The legend obviously post-dates the special veneration of Mary, and equally obviously isn’t true, but it’s some corroborating evidence for the cult of Mary in (linguistically) British culture, anyway.
Further, with some speculation and the odd reference: http://wendymewes.blogspot.ca/2011/06/saint-anne-of-brittany.html
What about those peaceful, socially conscious [del]Vikings[/del] Scandinavians? 
My favorite stereotypes:
That would be it. Diolch yn fawr!
It may also be - and this is speculative on my part - that at the time Boorde was writing (1547) the Henrician reformation had made more progress in England than in Wales, and the Welsh were thefore seen as traditionalist, papist holdouts. It’s notable that in 1547 the Bible and an early version of the Prayer Book had been published in English (and were presumably in use in England) but, SFAIK, nothing at all had been published in Welsh.
Fire up your Aristophanes (5th c BC) for stereotypes of the Spartans and others; Plautus (3rd c BC) for some one-stop shopping when it comes to the Carthaginians.
Nowt new under the sun.
The Italians fight hard in World War I, they just had all their men killed in an unwinnable theatre.
It was unquestionable WWII that leaves the modern impression of Italian military ineptitude, and for good reason. Italy fought a war that would have been hilarious in its incompetence were in not for the fact people were dying.
I think it’s generally true that national stereotypes are largely recent in invention, since they tend to be based on recent events (recent in a historical sense, anyway.) Most modern national stereotypes don’t date back longer than a century or so and many of those that do are relatively local - Germans have very different stereotypical views from Americans.
Yes. In fact, we can stereotype a nation by ascribing to it stereotypes about other nations. Is it fair to say that it is a common stereotype of Americans to say that they cherish stereotypes of the French as cheese-eating surrender monkeys, of the Irish as having red hair, etc?