Why does Perrie Aronnax seem obsessed with the nationality of everyone he meets?

Jules Verne’s classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is set in the late 19th century, during the time of the rise of nations as political entities. Professor Aronnax seems to be a true patriot of his own nation, France, and he seems determined to rank others with respect to how their nationalities compare to his own. Also, Aronnax is a scientist through and through, and he attempts to classify and understand everything he encounters and everyone he meets. The recognition of nationality, especially given the time period, is the most prominent way for him to classify and understand other people.

Stepping outside of Aronnax’s character, the reader should also consider that Verne may have wanted his readers to understand something that Aronnax seems incapable of accepting—that Captain Nemo cannot be classified as belonging to any nation because he is sovereign to himself. Thus, when Aronnax is perplexed by not being able to place Nemo’s nation of origin, we may interpret this as Verne’s way of showing us that Nemo is a man apart, an enigma that both terrifies and fascinates Aronnax because the object of his study cannot be easily classified into the nationalistic paradigm of his age.